Is unauthorized live streaming of e-sports tournaments an infringement?
In 2025, the Guangzhou Internet Court gave a landmark answer: Yes. The defendant was ordered to pay 1 million yuan in compensation.
This ruling brought a huge relief to the entire e-sports industry.
A technology company signed a strategic cooperation with ESL, a famous European e-sports firm, securing the exclusive Chinese live streaming rights for ESL tournaments and broadcasting them on its own platform.
However, a Wuhan-based internet company resorted to outright plagiarism. It live-streamed the ESL tournaments without authorization. Despite multiple written warnings from the rights holder to halt the infringement, the platform continued broadcasting for an entire season, covering 32 matches.
The defendant argued that "the tournament content lacks originality and does not constitute a work". The Guangzhou Internet Court rejected this claim.
After trial, the court held that live broadcasts of e-sports tournaments present continuous images showing the progress of the game, reflecting the competitiveness and storytelling of e-sports. The live production involves selection, switching, processing and editing of images. Given the unpredictability of the match and the diversity of in-game scenes, each frame and sound at any moment reflects personalized creative choices, which meets the objective form and communication mode of an audio-visual work protected by China’s Copyright Law.
Accordingly, the court ordered the Wuhan internet company to pay 1 million yuan in economic losses.
Why is this case significant? It is the first time that e-sports live broadcasts have been granted equal legal protection as traditional sports live broadcasts.
Before this ruling, the e-sports industry faced a long-standing dilemma: huge investments in tournaments were undermined by rampant piracy, while rights holders struggled to find clear legal grounds for protection. The debate over whether tournament live streams qualified as "works" under copyright law had lingered for years.
Now the court has provided a clear answer: they do qualify.
Moreover, e-sports broadcasts now enjoy the same level of legal protection as traditional sports. This gives rights holders a stronger legal weapon against piracy.
In the words of the legal director of Huya Technology: "This ruling has greatly boosted our confidence in investing more in e-sports content production."
In the past, copyright protection for e-sports faced three major pain points: difficulty in proving originality, complex ownership certification, and scattered, concealed infringements. The Guangzhou Internet Court’s groundbreaking judgment clarified the work status of e-sports live broadcasts, filling a gap in copyright law practice and setting a milestone.
More importantly, this case was coordinated with a concurrent "major sports tournament live streaming infringement case". In the latter, the court established the rule that platforms owe a higher duty of care for popular sports events. A platform that only "paused the stream for one minute" after receiving a complaint was found to have "pretended to enforce rules". The court ruled that the platform constituted contributory infringement by failing to act despite having the ability to stop the infringement.
Together, the two cases send a clear message: both traditional sports and e-sports live broadcast copyrights are strictly protected by law. Platforms cannot use "ignorance" as an excuse, nor can they take perfunctory measures to address infringements.
With e-sports becoming an official event at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, the commercial value and social attention of the e-sports industry have surged, and the cost of piracy has kept rising. This ruling is the first to recognize equal status for e-sports and traditional sports live broadcasts. When none of the enumerated rights in the original Copyright Law could provide protection, the court applied the catch-all clause to confirm infringement, offering a new judicial approach for cracking down on e-sports piracy.
Professor Wan Yong from Renmin University Law School commented: "These cases address new issues arising from new business formats and respond to new challenges facing intellectual property law in a timely manner."
E-sports is a typical example of the integration of emerging technology and the sports industry. Piracy for an entire season resulting in 1 million yuan in compensation — this ruling not only protects the legitimate rights of rights holders but also sends a clear signal to the industry:
Clear rules encourage investment; strong protection enables growth.
