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How LaLiga Broke My Site (and many more)

I had one goal: rebuild my personal site now that I’m not running a business anymore. A calm, geeky sunday morning.

Export WordPress → Setup Astro → Deploy to Azure Static Web App → Update DNS → Done!

Everything worked. Every single step. Until I moved the DNS from WordPress to Cloudflare. The moment the cutover happened, the site vanished.

I spent hours tearing everything apart. DNS dumps, flushing caches, comparing records, checking Azure, checking Cloudflare, comparing with other sites I run under the same setup. Nothing matched the symptoms. Nothing pointed to a mistake.

It made zero technical sense.

Then, that evening, I found a LinkedIn post by Daniel Garcia (cr0hn) sharing
a protest proposal against #LaLigaGate.

Suddenly, the whole thing clicked.

What LaLiga is doing (and why it might be affecting you)

  • In December 2024, a judge (Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona) authorized LaLiga to request ISPs to block IPs, domains, or URLs associated with illegal football broadcasts. (Wikipedia)
  • From February 2025, several operators began applying these dynamic blocks, activated on match days. (20minutos)
  • LaLiga says it is fighting piracy; the official goal is to stop illegal streams. (Wikipedia)

The execution, though, is far from precise.

LaLiga’s blocking system doesn’t just target “pirate” hosts. It hits IPs and IP ranges. If any illegal stream ever touched an IP within a shared infrastructure, everything behind that IP may get blocked for hours.

CDNs? Cloudflare? Shared hosting? Collateral damage.

My site just happened to be standing in the wrong DNS zone. Wrong place at the wrong time.

Side Effects

Think about the effects of this network vandalism:

Harm to Innocent Third Parties

  • Websites that have nothing to do with football, media, blogs, apps, stores, services, have been suddenly unreachable. (El País)
  • Even major platforms have suffered outages: social networks, payment gateways, video games, companies, online shops. (El País)
  • The reason is simple: block one shared IP → everything behind it goes down. (OndaCero)

Impact on Digital Rights

  • Reported violations include: freedom of information, free expression, and free competition. (El País)
  • What should be an anti-piracy action behaves like a broad internet blackout, with absolutely no transparency. (Social Future)

Ecosystem Instability

  • Blocks depend on the match, the operator, and the IP involved: completely unpredictable. (El País)
  • Businesses lose credibility and revenue; infrastructure and services look unreliable. (Marketing4eCommerce)
  • RootedCON has appealed to the Spanish Constitutional Court, arguing lack of proportionality, oversight, and safeguards. (Europa Press)
  • Congress attempted a non-binding resolution to limit these measures, and it failed. (Europa Press)
  • Many experts see this as a dangerous precedent for private internet censorship. (Social Future)

⚠️ Why this is a scandal ⚠️

  • A private action (backed by a court) is affecting thousands of innocent websites.
  • Blocking criteria are overbroad: IP ranges, CDNs, shared infra… No proportionality.
  • Fundamental rights are impacted: access, information, expression, competition.
  • No transparency: there are no public lists. We don’t know what is blocked, nor when, nor why.
  • It undermines trust in digital ecosystems, hosting, entrepreneurship, and infrastructure.
  • It sets a precedent for private Internet censorship, outside general legal frameworks.

What can we do? Protests and Mobilize

Next time your website or service suddenly dies, don’t assume something is broken or down. It might just be match day.

LaLiga did.

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