Systematically rejected in its legal appeals against the LFP, Canal+ has finally won its case in a procedure.
Despite the fiasco and its short French parenthesis, Mediapro had found the time to summon Canal+ before the Competition Authority to exercise its TV rights for the broadcast of the French football championship over the period 2020-2024. The Spanish group was targeting the encrypted channel in effect to “ abuse of dominant position “.
This Wednesday morning, the Competition Authority handed down its verdict, rejecting Mediapro’s complaint. “ In its referral, Mediapro maintained that GCP (Canal+ Group) had abused its dominant position in the pay television distribution market by implementing various practices aimed at ousting it from the market for publishing pay sports channels ( unacceptable financial and commercial conditions for the distribution of its Téléfoot channel, denigrating comments about its services, discrimination, loyalty-building offers holding consumers captive for a long period of time) », communicates the governing body.
“ The Authority considers that the mobilization by the Authority of significant internal resources for the examination of Mediapro’s complaint is not justified, insofar as the litigation brought by Mediapro before the commercial court targeted the same alleged practices. abuse of dominant position (judgment of January 31, 2023) », continues the administrative unit before driving the point home: “ The Téléfoot channel having definitively ceased broadcasting on February 7, 2021 and the Bobigny commercial court having pronounced on October 20, 2021 the judicial liquidation of Mediapro Sport France SARL, the complaints of abuse of dominant position formulated by Mediapro against of GCP no longer essentially follow a compensatory logic. »
