European Commission Clears Liberty’s Unitymedia Deal

BRUSSELS: The European Commission has given the go-ahead to Liberty Global’s acquisition of German cable-TV platform Unitymedia, noting that the deal "would not significantly impede effective competition" in the region.

In November, Liberty Global announced a 3.4 billion euros deal (including the assumption of debt) to acquire Unitymedia, which is the largest cable service in the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, with a footprint that passes about 8.8 million homes, covering cities such as Cologne, Dusseldorf and Frankfurt.

In its investigation of the impact of Liberty Global’s takeover of Unitymedia, the Commission rules that while both license content for their platforms in Austria and Germany, "the horizontal overlap in the market for licensing of TV content in German-speaking countries is unlikely to lead to competition problems due to the parties’ limited market share and the presence of strong competitors such as Sky, Canal+ and RTL Group."

The Commission also explored the issue of access to Liberty Global-owned Chellomedia’s channels by rival pay-TV platforms and found "no competition concerns because the merged company would not be able to negatively impact other TV platform operators by refusing access to its pay-TV channels because of the availability of competing channels. The merged company would also lack the ability to deny operators of TV channels access to customers, because of the merged company’s limited share of demand for TV content and the presence of strong competitors operating other TV-platforms."