Twitch avoids Russia ban over pirated Premier League games Published duration 18 December 2019

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A Russian watchdog no longer plans to block Twitch over a dispute concerning pirated Premier League football games, according to the country's state media.

The proposed ban had been prompted by a complaint from a firm that owns the local online rights to the matches.

Rambler had claimed 36,000 cases of copyright infringement.

On Wednesday, Twitch said that Rambler had withdrawn its claim and was no longer seeking any financial compensation.

"Twitch will continue to, as has always been the case, effectively and swiftly address any violation of its terms of service with the removal of unlicensed copyrighted content," said a spokeswoman for Twitch.

"We look forward to working together with Rambler to achieve this. We remain focused on delivering quality content to our Russian audience."

Russia is the third-largest user of Twitch. The platform's focus is video games but it also offers other live video streams and pre-recorded content.

Rambler bought exclusive digital distribution rights for three seasons of the English Premier League from the Russian sports broadcaster Match-TV earlier this year.

Amazon has its own interest in restricting access to the Premier League since it recently bought exclusive rights to a number of matches for its own Prime Video service in the UK.