Spanish police have dismantled Europe’s largest-scale TV piracy racket in an operation involving a series of raids on properties and server farms across the continent, including Britain.

The probe was launched in 2015 when England’s Premier League football corporation reported a website in Malaga offering unlicensed subscription packages.

Spanish police led an investigation also involving British, Danish and Europol investigators that uncovered a highly sophisticated and far-reaching parallel network of TV subscriber packages spanning virtually all of Europe.

The investigation led to three arrests in Spain and two in Denmark.

Spanish police found that the website reported by the Premier League was only one of 20 sites directing customers to 10 different internet protocol television packages aimed at country-specific audiences.