Law enforcement in Egypt partnered with the Motion Picture Association’s (MPA) anti-piracy unit Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) to target and close an online service that offered illegal access to live sports.

The service, called Livehd7, operated a network of streaming websites and online platforms that gave millions of users access to soccer matches from Major League Soccer (MLS), Serie A, Germany’s Bundesliga, France’s Ligue 1 and Portugal’s Primeira Liga, as well as top title matches like FIFA World Cup, UEFA Euro and EUEFA Nations League, and CONMEBOL Copa America.

The service logged an average of 17 million monthly visits from countries like the United States, Germany, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and France, officials with ACE said. Over the past year, 257 million web users have streamed some content from Livehd7, the organization said, though it wasn’t clear how that data was obtained or evaluated, and The Desk could not independently confirm it.

“We applaud the excellent work of Egyptian law enforcement in protecting the intellectual property rights of ACE’s sports media company members,” MPA Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer Larissa Knapp said in a statement. “The piracy of live sports is especially detrimental and poses an existential threat to sports leagues and their distribution partners, as a live sports broadcast loses substantial commercial value once a game ends. ACE remains committed to collaborating closely with the Egyptian Police to bring illegal operators to justice.”

Much of the content streamed through the service appeared to originate from BeIN Sports, which is owned by the Qatari government and previously operated by the Al Jazeera Media Group. It was not clear how involved BeIN Sports was in targeting and shutting down the sports service, though at least one executive was quoted in a press release issued by ACE earlier this week, suggesting there was some direct cooperation between them and law enforcement authorities in Egypt. (ACE and BeIN Sports have worked together on other initiatives in the past.)

“Egyptian-operated pirate websites are popular across the Middle East and North Africa and Arabic-speaking markets generally, causing detrimental harm to our industry,” Cameron Andrews, the Legal Director of Anti-Piracy at BeIN Media Group, said on Tuesday.

Andrews cited internal research that showed sports piracy costs “over $1 billion U.S. per year” to BeIN Sports, which bids on live sports rights for its Middle East broadcast and cable networks. When pirates steal their content and distribute it over the Internet without compensation, it “threaten[s] the viability of our business, which in turn has a direct effect on what broadcasters can pay for sports rights,” Andrews said.

“We are very pleased to see action being taken and ACE continues to set a precedent in the fight against piracy,” Andrews affirmed.

It is not the first time BeIN Sports has been targeted for its sports content: In 2018, reports indicated an upstart television service in Saudi Arabia was redistributing BeIN Sports channels under the “BeOutQ” brand name. The pirate TV service had direct links to the Saudi government, which was in the middle of a diplomatic row with Qatar at the time. The service shut down in 2019.