Sky writes to the Antitrust. And by putting together episodes and issues related to the broadcast of Serie A on Dazn, the Comcast-based media company essentially pushes itself to put on the Authority’s table the need to intervene. Even, if necessary, with the final solution of a sublicense of the rights (in the belly of Dazn for 2021-24).
Letter and legal opinion were sent last week to the Agcm. Contacted, Sky declined to comment. But, as reconstructed by the Sole 24 Ore, an “information supplement” was sent to the Authority regarding the proceeding opened by the Authority in the first days of July and aimed at verifying the existence of an agreement restricting competition.
The Agcm investigation must be completed by 30 June 2022. In the meantime, however, at the end of July the Authority decided not to proceed with the precautionary measures that it had initially feared, considering the immediate commitments proposed by Dazn and Tim (the telco has a partnership with Dazn and contributes 340 of the 840 million a year paid by the OT to the Lega Serie A for rights).
However, the first month and a half of the championship did not go the right way for Dazn, stumbled on various transmission problems (the last with the half hour of “Forum” from Canale 5 broadcast in place of the friendly match between Juventus and Alexandria for a mistake, however, made by Ei Towers and of which Dazn was a victim).
All for a Serie A broadcast for the first time in streaming (Sky only has the “co-exclusive” of 3 games a week). But the problems complained by consumers, who made themselves heard through the associations, came precisely for the transmission only in streaming. Which, according to Sky, would already demonstrate how the voluntary technological measures offered by Dazn and Tim to the Agcm to avoid precautionary measures would not be able to guarantee consumers a stable and quality service. The media company would also have highlighted how other commitments would have been disregarded. Tim, the Antitrust had announced in July, “undertakes not to offer bundled access services and content services”. And here according to Sky (but other operators have also made reports), the commitment would not have been respected given the Tim Gold promo (even if Tim sent the criticism back to the sender on the matter by talking about a connectivity-content offer that is not a bundle).