The agreement Canal + / beIN blocked by the Competition Authority – The Obs

by Gwénaëlle Barzic and Mathieu Rosemain

PARIS (Reuters) – The Competition Authority opposes the exclusive distribution agreement between Vivendi subsidiary Canal + and beIN Sports, dealing a setback scathing Vincent Bolloré who presented the project as essential to redress the pay channel.

the Authority, which also had the option of framing the agreement with binding conditions, finally chose to put his veto, did on Thursday two sources close to the record, confirming a report in the daily L’Opinion.

the official decision of the competition Authority is expected in the afternoon . Vivendi, Canal + and the Competition Authority did not wish to comment. BeIN Sports was not immediately available.

According to one source, Vivendi will now examine the consequences of this refusal.

Vincent Bolloré, Chairman of the Board media monitoring group, presented this agreement as a vital step in a number of the recovery of pay TV in France, which lost 405,000 subscribers last year and should acknowledge a higher operating loss to 400 million euros 2016.

an estimated $ 1.7 billion over five years, the draft exclusive distribution agreement would have to Canal + to enhance its sports offer, balding since the launch of Qatari channel in 2012, while making a pact with a formidable competitor.

to convince the regulator, Vincent Bolloré has repeatedly insisted on the difficulties of Canal +, up about “bankruptcy” of the chain encrypted which he threatened to “stop the tap” of the French pay-TV.

Canal +, which would concentrate with beIN Sports a large part of competitive sports broadcasting rights, has also highlighted the changes in competition with the emergence of new players like Altice, owner of the rights to the Premier League or the American Discovery, which bought Eurosport.

CONCESSIONS

the project however, aroused fears of many industry players, telecom operators head on the ground that might restrict access to the most popular sporting events.

Canal + had made a series of concessions to meet the concerns of the competition Authority, ensuring in particular that sports fans can always subscribe to the offer of beIN only at 14 euros without being forced to subscribe to Canal +.

Canal + had also proposed to allow operators to continue to offer beIN Sports to their TV packages but keeping hold of the distribution, which aroused the opposition of the operators, especially SFR and Orange.

“he now weighs a greater risk on the film industries of finance and sport a Canal ‘smaller’ on the premium means less funding for French films and it seems hard to imagine that beIN (which lost between 150 million and 300 million euros per year according to the press) will maintain its current investment in sport in the long term “, wrote in a note Bedouelle Charles, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas.

(Edited by Dominique Rodriguez)