Police shut down app providing access to professional sport content

THE National Police dismantled a network for illegally broadcasting audiovisual content via an app that had been downloaded more than 100 million times.

The police suspect illicit gains of around €5 million and have since interrupted the illegal broadcasting service worldwide.

The operation was carried out with the Andorra and Portuguese police, EUROPOL, INTERPOL and EUROJUST.

The investigation began in October 2018 as a result of complaints filed with the National Police by the ACE – Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the Professional Football League and the Premier League for unauthorised broadcasting of audiovisual content, subject to Copyright.

The police found that the person in charge of the app, called Mobdro, which worked on Android devices, was residing in Andorra and managed the network from there.

They also found there were three other people involved who were promoting the app on web domains in Spain. They did not in fact have a direct relationship with the person in Andorra but had managed to set up a site which provided access to the app from which they benefited financially.

The police have withdrawn the app from the platforms on which it was available in Spain and Portugal.

The profits were generated by advertising inserted both on the app and on the download page, as well as from the payment of subscriptions for the Premium version.

They also obtained benefits by transferring the connection details of their millions of users to an anonymisation company in exchange for free access without advertising to the platform.

One person has been arrested and three properties have been searched, one in Andorra and two in Murcia.

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