Spain’s court-ordered effort to block pirate football streams temporarily made Movistar’s own customer-support forum inaccessible. The December 2024 order, secured by LaLiga and Telefónica Audiovisual Digital, requires major Spanish internet providers - including Telefónica - to block IP addresses identified as carrying unauthorized match streams. The blocks are applied around match times and can be updated to cover replacement addresses. On Saturday evening, Movistar customers could not reach Comunidad Movistar, a forum for help with routers, Movistar Plus+ programming, and service outages. Visitors using rival provider DIGI saw a notice citing the court ruling; Telefónica users also lost access after the forum’s address was routed into a “black hole.”
The forum was using two Cloudflare IP addresses, and reports indicated that Spanish operators blocked both, likely causing the outage. Why those addresses were placed on the blocklist remains unknown, and neither LaLiga nor Movistar explained what happened. The incident highlights the risk of collateral damage when blocks target shared infrastructure: websites unrelated to piracy can become unreachable alongside suspected streaming services. By Sunday, the forum’s domain had stopped pointing to Cloudflare and was being served through Amazon CloudFront, though it is unclear who arranged the change or whether the blocking prompted it. LaLiga has defended the system as precise and has said affected parties can report problems, but the episode contrasts with its claim that legitimate services suffer no collateral impact.
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