The European Commission’s Battle Over Pay-TV Services: Can Segmenting the EU Market Be Justified?

(by Andreas Stephan) Yesterday the European Commission issued a Statement of Objections to Sky UK and six major US film studios, taking the preliminary view that restrictions put in place to prevent consumers located elsewhere in the EU from subscribing to pay TV services amount to a breach of competition law. The question is whether these entertainment companies can respond with a real justification for dividing the market for European Pay TV services along national lines.

A Regulator’s Price Comparison Website is Not Sensible: comment on Catherine Waddams’s blog post

(by Stephen Littlechild) Catherine, I enjoyed your stimulating blog today. You are quite right to point out that CCP anticipated and confirmed the adverse effects that Ofgem’s non-discrimination clause had on competition, as now confirmed by the CMA. And I entirely agree with you that the proposed protective tariff for those that do not switch is very ill-advised. But I am puzzled why you consider it very sensible that Ofgem set up an independent price comparator website [PCW] for domestic customers.

Are the European Competition Authorities making a less anticompetitive market more anticompetitive? The Booking.com saga

(by Pinar Akman) There are at least seven national competition authorities in the EU alone which have recently dealt with or are currently dealing with most-favoured-customer (MFC) clauses adopted by online platforms such as Booking.com, Expedia, iBookstore, Amazon, etc. One of the most recent developments has been the acceptance of commitments offered by Booking.com to the French, Swedish and Italian competition authorities. The acceptance of the said commitments might represent at best an ineffectual solution to any problem existing on the relevant market. In the worst case scenario, the commitments may have pushed the industry from a potentially less-anticompetitive equilibrium to a potentially more-anticompetitive equilibrium.

CMA Provisional Energy Market Findings: Does protecting the weak (even temporarily) make them stronger?

(by Catherine Waddams) In its provisional findings on the energy market, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) focuses on weak consumer response – but one proposal, to introduce a protective tariff for those who do not switch, might prove counterproductive.