The European Commission has decided to launch a broad investigation regarding the sale of sports rights to providers of the 3G of mobile phone services. The purpose of the inquiry is to have as clear and wide a view as possible of the availability of audiovisual sports rights in the European Union. Sports rights and notably football rights are powerful drivers for the sale of pay-TV subscriptions but also for the roll-out of new media markets, such as enhanced Internet and 3G services. The Commission says that it wants to make sure that access to this key premium content is not unduly restricted.
"As the launch of 3G networks enters into full swing and the success of the service weighs heavily on the operators' ability to deliver attractive audiovisual content, it is the task of competition regulators to ensure that access to sports rights remains open and non-discriminatory," said European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti.
The Commission's experience so far in this field has highlighted possible anti-competitive commercial arrangements and conduct across the whole industry.
Such behaviour would chiefly take the form of refusals to supply, the bundling of TV rights with new media/UMTS rights, the existence of embargoes favouring TV coverage over new types of coverage or the purchase of new media/UMTS rights on an exclusive basis.
The Commission has encountered some of these practices when dealing recently with the sale of the media rights to the Champions League European football tournament and the sale of the rights to the English and German premier leagues. In all cases, it took care to ensure that access to such popular rights was not monopolised to the detriment of new competition.
The aim of the Commission's inquiry is to establish whether current commercial practices infringe the European competition rules, in particular the prohibition of restrictive practices and abuses of dominant position."
Posted to the site on 2nd February 2004
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