Spanish football league LaLiga says it has taken legal action against Google over the piracy of its media rights, accusing the tech giant of cooperating with and profiting from crime.

LaLiga president Javier Tebas said Google housed urls and apps which offer pirated broadcasts of its matches and allowed criminals to make money from the illegal trade.

“We have to say this very clearly: they are cooperating with these criminals, they are committing criminal acts,” said Tebas. 

“Google gets money from the advertising and then also from the pirate entrepreneur, so it’s like money laundering through their account. 

“Already in some countries we have gone to the courts and we have reported them for money laundering. In Spain, Google has been taken to court because they were a collaborator of the crime and they also benefited from the piracy. 

“We are going to go right to the end with Google. We have had lots of meetings with Google related to this subject and they just ignore us.”

LaLiga’s media rights are worth €2bn (£1.65bn) a year, and Tebas believes Big Tech could stop 80 per cent of the piracy that currently damages the value of the rights.

“The real problem is for the rights holder – the Premier League, LaLiga or the NBA –  because if people can watch them free or cheaper it will affect the value of the broadcasting rights,” he told the FT Business of Football conference. “What worries me is that when our contracts come to an end the value will go down. 

“We’ve been working on this for a long time and been members of all associations and lobbies on piracy all over the world, and they’ve been useless because piracy is even higher than it was.”

Cloudflare sues LaLiga over piracy dispute

Tebas also pointed the finger at US cybersecurity giant Cloudflare, with whom LaLiga has a long-running dispute over the league’s attempts to prevent piracy.