LaLiga wanted to fine VPNs that did not block IPs during matches. A court has been set up
LaLiga has been waging an all-out war against football piracy for months and, with the support of a court ruling obtained in 2025, LaLiga had the power to ask operators to block certain IP addresses. The result? Websites that stumbled on match days due to some locks which were a clear example of kill flies with cannon shots. In a process in which it seemed that no one could stop these actions, LaLiga They got it in February of this year what seemed like another victory: a court in Córdoba ordered NordVPN and ProtonVPN Block certain IPs. Not even the judges themselves They knew if that could be done. and VPN tools evidently responded. Now another court in Córdoba has put some sense into all this, dismissing LaLiga’s request to impose fines on VPN platforms for failing to comply with the indiscriminate blocking order. The twist in the story of LaLiga and VPN blocks Through a release On its website, one of the companies affected by the initial ruling (NordVPN) has commented on the result of the ruling of the Commercial Court of Córdoba in what they have described as the dismissal of the request to impose coercive fines on NordVPN. The statement they have shared is the following: On May 19, 2026, the Commercial Court of Córdoba rejected LaLiga’s request to impose coercive fines on NordVPN for alleged non-compliance with the precautionary blocking order issued in February 2026. NordVPN had already warned at the time that the order was not technically viable without harming thousands of legitimate websites in Spain and abroad. Now, the court has accepted the independent technical evidence presented by NordVPN and ruled that it cannot be concluded that the company violated the order deliberately and without justification. The order issued in February required NordVPN to block a list of IP addresses that allegedly hosted unauthorized La Liga broadcasts. NordVPN’s technical experts have shown that target IP addresses change constantly, often within hours, meaning that the lists supplied do not correspond to the actual addresses at the time the blocking can be implemented. It was also demonstrated that the massive blocking at the IP level would have left thousands of completely legitimate websites without access for users in Spain and outside of it. After considering the conflicting expert reports, the court found a genuine technical dispute and ruled that the fines were not justified. It goes on to detail that this is a procedural resolution in the preliminary phase, so it does not resolve the underlying issue: the entire procedure that is still ongoing. nordVPN points out that it will continue to collaborate with the Spanish courts and points out that cloudflareone of the most affected in all this, also follows its own path of collaboration with the courts. What CloudVPN points out is that they are committed to the legitimate protection of intellectual property and the application of measures, but those measures must be proportionate, technically sound and respectful of both users and services that depend on the shared Internet infrastructure, stating that this massive IP blocking imposed on VPN providers, precisely, lacks all of these aspects. And most importantly, NordVPN points out something that is obvious: these measures “do not stop violators, who adapt in a matter of minutes while imposing real costs on legitimate users, companies and services that have no relation to the dispute.” In Xataka | LaLiga’s massive IP blocks are making life impossible for users, companies and developers. So you can claim
