Was a competition-restricting agreement concluded when selling the rights to broadcast the matches played in September by the Polish football team? The President of UOKiK has instituted the antimonopoly proceedings in this case

The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection monitors the level of competition existing on many markets. She conducts inter alia explanatory proceedings concerning the market of granting the right to broadcast sports events. When examining this case, the President was concerned about the way of fixing prices for broadcasting football elimination matches for the 2014 Football World Cup, played by the Polish team with Montenegro and Moldova respectively on 7^th and 12^th September. In fact the fans had a chance to follow the live transmission of the event on tv provided they paid PLN 20.oo to a selected supplier for watching the matches in the so- called pay-per-view (PPV)system. PPV is destined to provide specified contents. In most cases it provides live broadcasts of sports events – upon incurring the additional charge, not included in the subscription contract.

Sportfive, a company which enjoys the right to TV broadcasts of these events, granted the license to selected undertakings to provide their transmission via the pay-per-view system. The information collected by UOKiK clearly shows that when concluding contracts with eleven tv operators, Sportfive fixed the minimum price to be paid by viewers for the transmission in the amount of PLN 20.00.

However, under the antimonopoly law undertakings are not allowed to conclude agreements where the minimum resale price for goods and services is fixed. In conditions of the free market economy each entity should fix its prices independently, based on its own economic account. Fixing the minimum price results in elimination of competition between participants to a collusion. Added to that, it deprives consumers of the possibility to purchase a product or service at a lower expense.

For this reason the President of UOKiK instituted the antimonopoly proceedings to determine whether a competition-restricting agreement had been concluded. Not only Sportfive (grantor of broadcasting rights) but also eleven other, listed below, undertakings might have disobeyed the law: UPC Polska (Warszawa), Cyfrowy Polsat (Warszawa), Vectra (Gdynia), Multimedia (Gdynia), Toya (Łódź), Inea (Poznań), Echostar Studio ZTS Tele 4 (Poznań), SGT (Gliwice), ZUA Antserwis (Piła), TK Antserwis (Wałcz) and Asta-net (Piła).

It is worth noting that the subject of the proceedings is fixing the minimum resale service price, not selling the transmission via the pay-per-view system. This mode of brodcasting sports events does not infringe the provisions of the Act on competition and consumer protection.

Under the law the proceedings concerning competition-restricting practices should be concluded within five months from its instituting. However, particularly complex cases can take up even more time. Whenever allegations are proved, then undertakings may be imposed fines up to 10% of their revenue in the year preceding the issuance of the decision.

Additional information for the media:
Małgorzata Cieloch, Spokesperson for UOKiK
Department of International Relations and Communication
Pl. Powstańców Warszawy 1, 00-950 Warszawa
Phone: 48 22 827 28 92, 55 60 106, 55 60 314
Fax: 48 22 826 11 86
E-mail: [SCODE]bWFsZ29yemF0YS5jaWVsb2NoQHVva2lrLmdvdi5wbA==[ECODE]