Spain's football league, La Liga, has been hit with a €250,000 (£222,000) fine for using fans' mobile phones as spying tools to crack down on bars screening matches with pirated television signals.

Via its app, La Liga would remotely turn on the microphone function of users' phones to listen for the sound of a match broadcast.

The geolocation function was then used to establish the position of the person watching a televised game in order to check whether they were in an establishment with a paid subscription to an official La Liga package, or if it was using an illicit signal.

Spain’s data protection agency (AEPD) issued the fine after finding that up to 50,000 La Liga users' phones were affected.

The AEPD ruled that La Liga had committed a “very serious data protection infringement” by failing to adequately inform users that their device activates the microphone.