Piracy of MotoGP races is growing, especially in France where interest in the sport is exploding. For the first time, a major internet player is forced to intervene directly. Cloudflare has been ordered to block access to several illegal sites, under penalty of a fine.
In France as elsewhere in Europe, the fight against sports piracy is changing scale. Until now focused on Internet service providers, legal actions are now targeting more upstream services, such as public DNS or content distribution networks. In 2024, Canal+ had already obtained a decision forcing Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco to intervene directly. In Spain, the LaLiga football league also obtained authorization to block shared IP addresses, at the risk of impacting users unrelated to illegal streaming.
It is in this context that the Paris Judicial Court issued an unprecedented decision on March 28, 2025. At the request of Canal+, the holder of the MotoGP broadcasting rights in France, the court ordered Cloudflare to block access to fourteen sites illegally broadcasting the races. The injunction extends to all of its services, including DNS, CDN, and proxies. It also provides for the dynamic blocking of any future sites identified by the regulatory authority ARCOM. Cloudflare must block MotoGP streaming sites until the end of 2025. Cloudflare to implement these blocks within three days. If the company refuses, it is exposed to a fine of 5,000 euros per day and per site. When a user in France now tries to access a targeted domain, they are redirected to a page displaying an HTTP 451 error, indicating that content is inaccessible for legal reasons. The block will remain in effect until the final race of the season, scheduled for November 16, 2025.
Cloudflare has attempted to defend itself by emphasizing that it does not directly broadcast the content, but merely forwards or caches it. These arguments are deemed insufficient by the French courts, which consider the company to be a key player in accessing pirated streams. This decision, if it inspires other countries, could mark a turning point in the fight against online sports piracy. Other technical platforms could soon be forced to act as well.
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