La Liga’s approach to clamp down on piracy leads to a fine

La Liga has defended its actions having received a €250,000 penalty from The Spanish Data Protection Agency. The fine was levied because in an attempt to crack down on piracy through using technology La Liga, in fact, breached GDPR. The case against La Liga is that when a user accesses La Liga’s android app the microphone on the device is activated. The sounds are stored and analysed by La Liga to ascertain if a football match is being shown. These recordings, used in combination with GPS tracking, enable the Spanish football league to judge whether or not a premise is showing a match and if this business/location has a license to show the game. The Agency said that La Liga’s actions breached several aspects of GDPR, including a failure to gain consent every time the microphones in users’ devices were activated. Responding to the fine Liga said it “disagrees deeply” with the ruling and believes the agency has “not made the effort to understand how the technology works.”