Mendoza Police arrested the founder of pirate football streaming site Fútbol Libre on Wednesday. The 23-year-old man, whose name was not released and went under the alias “Kahsad,” stands accused of infringing intellectual property rights.

The arrest came after the Argentine judiciary ordered the blocking of 50 web domains used to live broadcast games illegally. The investigation started after a complaint by the Alliance against Audiovisual Piracy, an NGO created by content industry operators working in Latin America like DirectTV and SKY Brasil. The Buenos Aires Province Cybercrimes Investigation Unit conducted the operation in Godoy Cruz, Mendoza.

“A few months ago, a broadcaster who owns the rights to the football games in Argentina complained they were stealing their signal and streaming it for free,” prosecutor Alejandro Mussos explained to radio station Rock&Pop. 

“They were stealing the broadcasting signal right from the company’s servers,” he said, adding that computers and documentation pertaining to the inner workings of the sites were seized.

Fútbol Libre was one of Argentina’s most popular pirate streaming sites, showing games and shows from leagues across the world. According to the legal resolution ordering the blocking, over four million users watched Boca Juniors’ Copa Sudamericana debut against Bolivia’s Nacional de Potosí on April 3.

Former site users, however, are unlikely to take a no for an answer and are already on the search for alternatives. They claim that the problems are the disproportionate costs and lack of usability. In order to watch Primera Division games in Argentina, users require a “Pack Fútbol” subscription, which starts at ARS$9700 (US$10 at the official, US$7 at the MEP rate) in addition to a cable subscription. The package comes with two additional channels users can access to watch games, but depend on their cable provider’s TV app to do it at deferred times or on their mobiles.

“I used it because the prices to watch my team felt like an extortion,” former Fútbol Libre user and Boca Juniors fan Maximiliano C told the Herald. “I use apps to consume all kinds of media and there simply isn’t one for Argentine football. It also had the advantage that I could see them on any of my devices. Now, I’ll use some other free streaming site to watch games.”

The troubled history of football on TV in Argentina

This is not the first time that match watching, something akin to a national ritual in the country, has been the source of discord. Football was first broadcast on TV in Argentina in 1951, and by 1954, most matches were transmitted and all Primera Division games aired on Argentina’s public television.

In 1991, Televisión Satelital Codificada (TSC) — a company owned by media conglomerates Grupo Clarín and Torneos y Competencias —  bought the Primera División broadcasting rights. They set up a pay-per-view system where users paid for a subscription and received a signal decoder to install in their homes

This gave rise to football bars and cafés throughout the country, where owners would purchase the subscription and fans gathered on match days to watch the games, a staple of 90s and 2000s Argentine football culture. 

Although the system progressively relaxed and some games were aired freely from 2001 onwards, most matches were behind a paywall and couldn’t be broadcast. This gave rise to the bizarre phenomenon of cable TV channels airing “games” with broadcasters talking about them accompanied by images only showing fans in the stands. Non-subscribers could only see game highlights and analysis on Sunday nights via the TV show Fútbol de Primera on Canal 13.

In 2009, with many clubs facing a severe economic crisis, the Argentine Football Federation (AFA) requested a AR$720 million (over US$188 million at that time’s official rate) advancement from TSC, which was refused. In August of that year, AFA canceled TSC’s contract and signed a new one with the Argentine government under President Cristina Kirchner in exchange for AR$600 million (US$157 million). From that point on, matches were broadcast live for free on Argentina’s public broadcasting channel, Televisión Pública.

The deal was ended under Mauricio Macri’s presidency in 2017. The rights were purchased by an alliance between U.S. media conglomerates Fox and Turner, which were later transferred to Disney through its acquisition of 21st Century Fox. Currently, Argentine football fans need a cable subscription plus an additional service called “Pack Fútbol” to watch local games, but they also require a Disney+ streaming service (US$11 at the official, US$7,5 at the MEP rate) for any international competition games, such as the Copa Libertadores.