Belgian internet service providers (ISPs) and public DNS resolver operators must block access to more than 130 pirate sports streaming domains and five illegal IPTV platforms due to concerns of copyright infringement.
If they fail to comply with the Brussels Enterprise Court's order, they risk a penalty of €100,000 per day for non-compliance.
Internet platforms like Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco have formally been ordered to disable DNS access to the infringing domains. This means that switching to a public DNS like Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 or Google’s 8.8.8.8 won’t do users who want to watch illegal sports streams any good anymore.
According to Belgian news outlet L’Echo, the court has ordered a dynamic blockade of the sports streaming domains, meaning that mirror websites must be detected and blocked as well.
The Belgian ISPs and internet platforms have to finance the costs of the blockade themselves. This is due to a law that dates back to 2022 and states that ISPs such as Proximus, Telenet, Orange Belgium, and Voo must implement domain name system (DNS) blocking at their own expense.
We have DAZN, a live sports broadcasting platform available in over 200 countries, and its streaming platform, 12th Player, to thank for this injunction. It obtained a court order to block illegal sports streaming websites and IPTV platforms due to copyright infringement.
According to DAZN, a third of all Belgians between the ages of 16 and 24 use illegal streams to watch Premier League Football, mixed martial arts (MMA), and top-tier events like boxing for free, causing up to £180 million per year in damages.
Speaking at The Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit in February 2025, Tom Burrows, DAZN’s head of global rights, explained how piracy and illegal streams were a problem for the broadcaster.
“We’re getting to the stage where it’s almost a crisis for the sports rights industry. Media-rights deals have been done on the basis of exclusivity, but I think there’s almost an argument to say you can’t get exclusive rights anymore because piracy is so bad,” he explained to attendees, according to The Athletic.
DAZN is very pleased with the verdict.
“As the holder of Belgian soccer rights, we have been playing a pioneering role in the fight against piracy for over a year now. The summary proceedings filed at the end of March with the French-speaking Business Court in Brussels demonstrate DAZN’s determination to defend its intellectual property rights and the value of its content for its subscribers,” a DAZN spokesperson told Le Soir.
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