A French court in the city of Rennes sentenced 5 people to prison terms on piracy and illegal broadcasting of sports matches and competitions on 7 websites.
Judicial rulings on the accused ranged from six months to one year in prison, in addition to financial fines of up to 20,000 euros.
This came after a lawsuit filed by the French "Canal Plus" channel in conjunction with the network of "Bn Sports" and "SFR".
Canal Plus seeks compensation in the amount of about thirty million euros, while the amounts obtained by the accused for broadcasting the matches are estimated at 230 thousand euros only between 2014 and 2018.
Pirated sites have achieved a great spread on the World Wide Web, which has harmed the rights to broadcast channels, as the number of viewers on them was estimated at more than 7.5 million between 2014 and 2017.