The National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) has opened a sanction file against Telefónica de España for the agreement it reached with Dazn for the exclusive rights to Formula 1 for the 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons.
As announced by the regulatory body this Thursday in a statement, the operator would have breached certain commitments it acquired when it bought DTS (Canal) in 2015.
The CNMC authorized that operation subject to certain conditions that were extended in 2020 and that have been lifted at the end of April.
Among them, Telefónica had to make a wholesale offer of its own premium channels available to other pay television operators in Spain under fair, reasonable, objective, transparent and non-discriminatory conditions and not acquire or exploit exclusive rights to broadcast or exploit channels. edited by third parties.
However, the CNMC points out that, in the agreement with Dazn, Telefónica sublicensees to the British sports platform the exclusive broadcast rights of the Formula 1 competitions for the aforementioned seasons.
Both parties also agreed on the conditions under which Dazn allowed Telefónica non-exclusive access to its content and established the limitations for third parties to acquire these rights.
In addition, the contract determined the way in which customers who contract Telefónica packages that access its contents are counted, who are counted as platform customers for the purposes of calculating the guaranteed minimum cost paid for the acquisition of television channels. the operator.
With the opening of this file, a maximum period of three months begins for the investigation and for its resolution by the CNMC, which has already urged Telefónica to change this agreement in 2021.
This is not the first time that the CNMC has opened a sanction file against Telefónica for breaching the obligations and commitments it accepted and which led the entity to authorize the purchase of DTS.
In fact, last March, the CNMC sanctioned Telefónica with six million for an offer that it launched with Movistar Fusión from April 11, 2021 to August 1 of the same year that included the lease of a mobile phone with an obligation to stay.
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