EU Clears BSkyB’s German, Italian Acquisitions

BRUSSELS: The European Commission has cleared the proposed acquisition of Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia by BSkyB.

The Commission concluded that the transaction would not raise competition concerns, since the activities of the three companies are geographically complementary. Its investigation showed that the geographic scope of the markets for the licensing or acquisition of audio-visual programming for free to air and for pay TV, the wholesale supply of TV channels for free to air and for pay TV, the retailing of audio-visual programming to consumers and the sale of TV advertising airtime is "national or along linguistically homogeneous areas." The Commission found that the transaction would not lead to any overlaps in the parties' activities, since they are mainly active in different national markets.

"The Commission found that it was unlikely that the merged company would be able to impose a change from current licensing practices, which are focused on national territories or language areas, towards the joint purchase or simultaneous negotiations for premium content across several countries," a statement from the Commission read. "First, there are practical obstacles, such as different timelines for the negotiations of certain rights licensing. Second, rights holders would not deviate from their current preferred model of licensing, unless it is in their interest in terms of maximizing revenues. The Commission notes that although there are already a number of broadcasters that operate across various territories in the European Economic Area (EEA), rights holders have not accepted the practice of multi-territorial licensing to any meaningful extent. Finally, even assuming that rights owners were to license rights on a pan-European basis, the merged entity would in any event face competition for multi-territory rights from a number of multinational groups which already operate in the EEA."