Italy’s antitrust watchdog AGCM has opened an investigation into Sky Italia’s acquisition of the R2 unit of commercial broadcaster Mediaset.
The Antitrust Authority focuses its attention on the Sky-Mediaset Premium transaction, initiating an investigation procedure “aimed at assessing the concentration transaction consisting in the acquisition of control of the company R2 S.r.l. (Mediaset Premium’s pay operation branch) by Sky Italia S.r.l. and Sky Italian Holdings S.p.A.”
The Authority intends to assess “the possible competitive effects of the acquisition by Sky, the dominant operator in the pay-TV market, of R2, i.e. Mediaset Premium’s digital terrestrial technical platform, which in the past was substantially Sky’s only competitor in the pay-TV market.”
It will therefore be determined whether the operation will strengthen Sky’s dominant position in the pay-TV sector and ‘in the market for wholesale access services to the digital terrestrial pay-TV technical platform’.
The R2 unit includes the technical maintenance and sales assets of Mediaset’s pay-TV subsidiary Premium and the transaction is part of a wider commercial deal between Mediaset and Sky signed nearly a year ago that gave the latter’s satellite customers access to Premium’s cinema and TV series channels at no additional cost and allowed Sky to launch a pay-TV service via DTT.
