Antitrust, fines to Dazn (7.2 million) and Tim (761 thousand euros) for the agreement on Serie A
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That agreement between Tim and Dazn was not to be done. In fact, the Antitrust writes, it could “have harmful effects on the competitive dynamics underway in the TLC sector in the markets for connectivity services and the retail sale of pay television services”. Moreover, it was “an offer likely to deprive Tim’s competitors, active in the electronic communications markets, of the possibility of associating particularly valuable content with their own connectivity services, such as the rights to watch Serie A matches for the three-year period 2021-2024”.
Sanctions on Dazn and Tim
The Authority chaired by Roberto Rustichelli shows a red card – with a fine of 760,776 euros for Tim and 7,240,250 euros for Dazn. The object of the dispute, recalls the Authority, was the agreement “provided for the exclusivity in favor of Tim and the prohibition of partnerships with its competitors in the telecommunications sector”.
The precautionary measures
The effects of the agreement lasted about a month “as they were sterilized – recalls the Agcm note – by the timely start of the preliminary investigation procedure by the Authority which took place on 6 July 2021. The simultaneous precautionary sub-procedure, which took place close to the start of the first football season of the three-year period 2021-2024, in fact prevented the effects of the agreement from continuing, as in August 2021 Tim and Dazn interrupted the application of the disputed clauses”
The new agreement from August 2022
The exclusivity then dropped altogether on August 4, 2022, which eliminated the exclusivity altogether. Since then, it has been possible for all interested operators, including Sky, to conclude partnerships with Dazn and, therefore, to offer a combination of connectivity services and audiovisual content relating to the Serie A football championship. But already in the summer of 2021 , as soon as the attribution of the audiovisual rights of Serie A was completed, Agcm had targeted what – on the recommendation of operators ranging from Fastweb, to Vodafone, to Wind Tre, Open Fiber, Sky – had been indicated as a restrictive agreement of competition with reference to the clauses of the agreement which commercially limit Dazn in offering pay television services, with the effect, among other things, of reducing its ability to offer discounts to end users and hindering other operators of telecommunications from undertaking any commercial initiatives.
The complaints of Agcm and the appellants
The appeal had started from Sky after Dazn’s refusal of an offer of 500 million euros per season to be able to broadcast the 7 games exclusively in the belly of the platform. And in any case, there were essentially two main criticalities highlighted by the appellants. The first consisted in the fact that non-replicable editorial content, with high value for consumers, such as the Serie A football championship, ended up being centralized on the Internet platform alone and in its exclusive marketing by Tim alone. In this way, Tim would end up being the only telco capable of including this valuable content in their triple play offers. An indicator that something was wrong for the appellants and the Agcm also arose from the fact that Dazn had interrupted any type of negotiation with other TLC operators, such as with Vodafone, with which it had a previous agreement.
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