Polish antitrust watchdog ends proceedings against Telewizja Polsat and Discovery Group companies

Polish antitrust and consumer protection regulator UOKiK, in the course of the investigations, carried out extensive market research, as part of which they sent more than 500 detailed questionnaires to TV operators.

"The information gathered and subjected to meticulous analysis did not confirm our suspicions that the practices of Telewizja Polsat and companies from the Discovery group constitute exploitation of their market position to the disadvantage of pay-TV operators," said the head of UOKiK Tomasz Chrostny, quoted in the statement.

UOKiK initiated proceedings against Telewizja Polsat and four companies from the Discovery group - Discovery Communications Europe, Discovery Communications Benelux, Discovery Polska and Eurosport in April 2021.

Polish antitrust and consumer protection regulator suspected that the actions of Polsat and the Discovery Group companies may constitute an abuse of a dominant position. It analysed whether the terms of sale (programme licensing) at the wholesale level, this is in the relationship between the broadcaster and the operator, may have infringed competition.

"Television operators had to place a certain proportion of the programmes they purchased in so-called basic packages, namely packages offered and targeted at the widest retail audience. This, in turn, may have meant that consumers, too, may not have had the choice of buying a smaller package from a TV operator and thus may have been forced to buy a larger package, even if they were not interested in certain programmes," UOKiK wrote.

"The evidence gathered in the proceedings indicated that the removal of the obligation to place programmes in the packages specified by the broadcasters would in practice not affect the shape of the packages offered to subscribers," it added.

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