Media coverage of sport from the perspective of antimonopoly law

In its decision concerning a suspicion of an abuse of a dominant position TASR, the President of the Office established the definition of relevant markets in the area of agency news provision by saying that there were :

In relation to the provision of all partial news services (except for visual news), the provision of news in the Slovak language as a criterion in defining the geographic boundaries of a relevant market reflects the fact that the customers of these services prefer them in the Slovak language.

In order to fill up their broadcasting structure, broadcasters are forced to buy a considerable amount of television or radio programmes produced by independent producers. Although broadcasters can produce the programmes themselves, the relevant market will only be a market for programmes produced by independent producers, because programmes produced by broadcasters are mostly used by themselves and not sold to the operators of other competing stations.

Since a large majority of programmes produced by independent producers can be regarded as copyright work , the relevant market will be a market for granting the rights to broadcast these programmes to broadcasters.

The European Commission in its decisions regularly publishes the list of its previous decisions relating to the boundaries of relevant product and service markets for granting the rights to broadcast or transmit the individual types of TV programmes . The content, the rights to which constitute a number of separate relevant markets, is sport, and in particular football. According to the European Commission there are :

The market for granting the rights to broadcast football events that are played regularly throughout every year and in which teams from a certain State participate, can be distinctly separated from the market for granting the rights to broadcast football events with longer periodicity and with participation of national representation teams (European Championship, World Championship), among others because these rights are granted by different organisations.

The rights to broadcast football events that are played regularly throughout every year and in which teams from a certain State participate, cannot be substituted by the rights to broadcast other (non-football) sporting events (that are played regularly and in which teams from a certain State participate), because of the higher attractiveness of football and hence incomparably higher price of the rights to broadcast them.

As regards to the geographic delimitation of the market for granting the rights to broadcast football events that are played regularly throughout every year and in which teams from a certain State participate, this market basically remains national. As regards to the national league and the national cup, due to the specific nature of these events, determined by cultural factors and requirements of national viewers, the spatial reach of these events is limited to the territory of the State, where they are played. Finally, the rights to broadcast national league and national cup matches are in reality acquired by television operators from the respective State. But also, as regards the Champions League and the UEFA Cup, according to the valid UEFA rules relating to the granting of broadcasting rights, these rights are mostly sold at the national level. Only relevant markets for the sale of rights to broadcast football events with longer periodicity and with participation of national representation teams (European Championship, World Championship) could have a multinational scope.

Markets for granting the rights to broadcast other sports events are defined, because although broadcasting of non-football sports events are not a determinative factor in the decision-making of television viewers about subscription of programmes offered by a particular TV broadcaster, it nevertheless remains an important factor of the attractiveness of their offer. This group of sports events comprises, among others, the Olympic games, large tennis tournaments, boxing matches or motor races. In terms of the characteristics of these events as well as in terms of price conditions, the granting of rights to broadcast these sports events can be distinguished from the granting of rights to broadcast other programmes. From the perspective of television viewers, these sports events are events of pan-European importance. Moreover, the rights to broadcast some of these sports events are acquired for the whole of Europe and some broadcasters, such as Eurosport, always acquire the rights to broadcast these sports events for the whole of Europe or at least for several countries and to broadcast them in several countries. But even these circumstances do not justify the territorial delimitation of a relevant market as a pan-European market. The reason is that although the rights to broadcast some sports events are granted for the whole of Europe, later they are sold, irrespective of the TV signal transmission technology, for the territories of individual States or language zones. Therefore, the market for granting the rights to broadcast sports events other than football matches and also remains spatially delimited by the territories of the individual States or language zones.

The common reason for defining these markets as separate relevant markets was the incapacity of the grantors of rights to these types of TV programmes to quickly switch to the granting of rights to broadcast other types of TV programmes , i.e. the negative result of the test of substitutability of goods or services, on the supply side.

The Commission specified that in the market for granting broadcasting rights to TV channels, the granting of rights to pay sports TV channels did not form a separate relevant market - it was only a segment of the market for granting broadcasting rights to TV channels . Nevertheless, the Commission assesses the impact of the business practices also separately for this market segment .