A dispute over sports rights
Swisscom defends itself against mega buses
Swisscom is appealing against 72 million fines in the pay-TV action. A month ago, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed Weko’s fines against Swisscom in its sports rights dispute.
Publication date: 8:33 am
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Updated: 10:30 am
A month ago, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed a CHF71.8 million fine that the Federal Competition Commission (Comco) imposed on Swisscom in 2016 in a sports rights dispute.
Specifically, Swisscom and its subsidiary Cinetrade (today Blue Entertainment) were fined for abusing their dominant position in broadcasting Swiss football and ice hockey matches on pay television.
Only Sports Discount
The reason given is that some competitors have rejected any offer to broadcast live sports events on their platform by Swisscom, and others have only given a limited range of sports. The ruling covered the period from 2002 to 2012.
Swisscom had already announced a month ago that it would consider pushing the ruling forward. The communications group announced a month ago that Swisscom and Blue Entertainment remain convinced that they acted lawfully when marketing sports content.
The significant investments made by Swisscom and Cinetrade between 2002 and 2012 would have justified the expansion of the minimal sports distribution across the Swisscom TV platform. This was the only way to adequately protect investments at the time.
Smaller TV Providers Benefit
The problem is currently no longer present. All TV customers currently receive all sports content from Swisscom and Sunrise UPC. Smaller TV providers will also benefit from this; Swisscom made it clear at the time that they could get sports content from the two major carriers.
Rival Sunrise UPC is still considering a civil law claim: “We are analyzing the situation,” a spokeswoman said upon request. (pbe/SDA)
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