L’Antitrust sanctions Tim and Dazn for the agreement on the TV rights of the Serie A football championship 2021-2024. The Competition and Market Authority announces the conclusion of the investigation relating to some clauses of the agreement between the two companies relating to the broadcasting of Serie A football championship matches in the three-year period 2021-2024. Based on the revenues deriving to the two companies from the marketing of television rights for the 2021-2022 season, the Authority fined Tim for 760,776.82 euros and Dazn for 7,240,250.84 euros.
The Antitrust recalls that, for the three-year period 2021-2024, following the tender called by the football league in 2021, the holder of the TV rights is Dazn. According to the Authority, the agreement, which provided for the exclusivity in favor of Tim and the prohibition of partnerships with its competitors in the telecommunications sector, could ”cause harmful effects for the competitive dynamics underway in the telecommunications sector in the services markets of connectivity and the retail sale of pay-television services”.
By virtue of the agreement, in fact, Tim ”has marketed a bundle offer that cannot be replicated by its competitors, including the contents of Timvision and Dazn and the connectivity service”, explains the Agcm. Furthermore, it was “an offer capable of depriving Tim’s competitors, active in the electronic communications markets, of the possibility of associating particularly valuable contents with their own connectivity services, such as the rights to watch championship matches Serie A for the three-year period 2021-2024, limiting the ability to exert competitive pressure against Tim itself”.
Moreover, some clauses were ”suitable for limiting Dazn’s commercial options in relation to the development of offers of audiovisual content on other technological platforms”. The effects of the agreement, with particular reference to those deriving from the exclusivity, lasted about a month, as they were sterilized by the start of the preliminary investigation procedure by the Authority (which took place on 6 July 2021). The original agreement was then replaced by a new contract, signed on August 4, 2022, which completely eliminated the exclusivity. In this way, ”all the interested operators, including Sky, were allowed to conclude partnerships with Dazn and, therefore, to offer a combination of connectivity services and audiovisual content relating to the Serie A football championship”.
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