Earlier this year, accounting firm Grant Thornton published a report in partnership with the Live Content Coalition to evaluate the effectiveness of takedown notices.
One of the main conclusions was that, in 2024, only a small fraction of takedown notices sent by a group of select rightsholders resulted in suspensions of pirated live streams.
Of the 10.8 million notices recorded last year, only 19% resulted in suspensions of pirated live streams. Even when online services responded, it often took more time than rights holders would like. Only a small fraction of the reported live streams, 2.7%, were suspended within 30 minutes of a takedown notice being sent.
These findings were used by rightsholders to argue that current policy doesn’t work. They hoped that by sounding the alarm bell, things would change, but new data covering the first half of 2025 doesn’t provide any evidence that this is the case.
More Takedowns, Fewer Suspensions
In a new industry-backed report, Grant Thornton finds that the number of takedown notices sent to online intermediaries grew by more than 15 million in the first half of 2025, which is roughly triple the number of takedowns that were recorded in the two previous periods.
The bar chart below shows that in 2025, the majority of the notices were sent to “other” service providers, which includes Cloudflare. Dedicated service providers were good for 42% of the notices, while online platforms only received a tiny fraction.
The report regularly combines the 2025 findings with those from last year’s reports, noting that since January 2024, rightsholders have sent 26.2 million takedown notices for live streaming broadcasts. While the suspension rate was 19% in the second half of 2024, that figure decreased to just 5% in the first half of 2025.
The bar chart below displays the actions per intermediary, revealing that the low percentage of suspensions is largely driven by the popular “others” category. This category includes proxy services such as Cloudflare, which typically takes no action when the allegedly infringing content is not hosted by Cloudflare itself.
Based on the new findings, the report concludes that “online piracy continues to escalate, while progress in the effectiveness of mitigation efforts remains limited.” While this appears to be a logical conclusion, there are some important caveats.
Methodological Concerns
The report is based on data provided by ten rightsholders, who are either major sports leagues or broadcasters. This is an increase of two rightsholders over the eight featured in the previous report, which likely has an effect on the takedown notice volume, regardless of piracy developments.
These companies have direct control over how many notices they send and can, in theory, increase the volume while piracy rates are falling.
This means that the drastic increase in notices might mostly be a reflection of increased or improved enforcement efforts, rather than an unprecedented tripling of the number of available pirated live streams.
There’s also a clear bias risk. These rightsholders have a vested interest in showing that piracy is a large and worsening problem, to support their lobbying efforts for stricter regulations. The methodology does not account for this.
The inclusion of Cloudflare as a nonresponsive intermediary also raises questions. It is well known that Cloudflare does not take action against reported pirated content that it doesn’t host. The company believes that, under U.S. law, it is not legally required to do so for its proxy services.
By including an ever-increasing number of notices sent to services like Cloudflare, which they know will not result in a suspension for policy reasons, the report’s methodology effectively “bakes in” a lower success rate.
Although the data is not inaccurate, it’s less of a measure of the evolving piracy landscape than it is a reflection of the rightsholders’ enforcement strategy, particularly their decision to target Cloudflare and similar platforms, which are known for not taking action.
LaLiga Rethinks Its Headline
That the report leaves room for multiple explanations, or framing options, was illustrated by the Spanish football league LaLiga. On Tuesday, it initially pushed out a concerning press release mentioning that “piracy of live sports events soars”.
That’s not completely accurate, however, as the research only looks at the volume of takedown notices. It appears that LaLiga understands this nuance, as the headline was changed a few hours later to: Piracy Detection in Sports and Other Live Events Hits Record Levels Thanks to Greater Investment in Resources and Technology
This new headline suggests that the ‘escalation of online piracy’ reported by Grant Thornton, might be an escalation in anti-piracy detections, rather than an increase in piracy. That’s quite an important distinction, considering its intended goal.
EU Advocacy
The report was written specifically to address the impact of a recommendation by the EU Commission published two years ago. This policy document encouraged member states to introduce measures to facilitate prompt takedowns of live streams.
The recommendation, which doesn’t include any legislative requirements, also encouraged service providers and rightsholders to collaborate and tackle the challenge together.
In its report, which references the EU’s non-binding recommendation in its title, Grant Thornton indirectly suggests that it failed to curb the negative piracy trends.
“During the period of analysis, there has been a negative trend in key metrics, such as an increase in the number of notices issued and a decrease in the percentage of those resulting in suspension.
“This suggests that, despite the European Commission’s Recommendation, the issue of online piracy continues to escalate, while progress in the effectiveness of mitigation efforts remains limited,” the report concludes.
This is an interesting conclusion, since LaLiga now cites the same takedown data to show that piracy detection hit record levels with help from investments in resources and technology. That means that piracy itself may not have worsened at all.
When the data is this flexible and open to interpretation, the cleanest and only truly verifiable conclusion is simple. In the first half of 2025, a small group of rightsholders sent a lot more takedown notices. Why? That depends on who you ask and what their goal is.
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A copy of the latest progress report, titled “Two Years On: Online Piracy Trends Worsen Despite the European Commission’s Recommendation” is available here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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