French Court Rejects beIN Sports Bid to Fine VPNs and Cloudflare Over Piracy

A French court has dismissed an attempt by beIN Sports to levy substantial daily fines against major VPN operators and Cloudflare for failing to completely shut down pirate streams of professional tennis matches.

In rulings issued on October 7, the Paris Judicial Court determined that the tech intermediaries had made a reasonable effort to comply with prior injunctions, denying beIN's demand for €10,000 daily penalties for every domain that remained accessible. The ruling was reported by TorrentFreak following initial coverage from French outlet L'Informé.

The dispute stems from blocking orders beIN secured in May to protect its exclusive French broadcast rights for the Women's Tennis Association tour. The sports network targeted services including Cloudflare, Surfshark, NordVPN, and Proton, demanding the suppression of ten unauthorized streaming domains and IPTV providers such as thetvapp.to and tennistream.com.

When piracy streams remained reachable through certain pathways, beIN returned to court seeking strict financial sanctions. Counsel representing Cloudflare, NordVPN, and Surfshark argued that technical constraints made total eradication unfeasible, noting that the companies had taken active measures within their network architecture. Cloudflare instituted CDN-level blocks on three of four designated sites, while NordVPN and Surfshark blocked six of eleven targeted domains across their French DNS servers. Proton did not attend the hearing.

The court accepted the intermediaries' technical explanations, finding their actions sufficient to fulfill their legal obligations. In its initial May ruling, the court had already rejected an earlier beIN proposal for €2,000 daily fines, concluding there was no evidence the tech platforms intended to deliberately bypass compliance.

For sports broadcasters and studio rights holders, the decision highlights the continuing limitations of enforcing web injunctions against foundational network services. As tracked by Hollywood Tomorrow, European courts increasingly distinguish between good-faith technical mitigation and total liability, leaving rights owners to manage the gap between legal orders and operational reality on the open internet.