Commission approves Discovery’s acquisition of Scripps, subject to conditions; rejects referral request by Polish competition authority

Background and further information:

Discovery and Scripps are both active as providers of basic pay-TV channels to TV distributors in the European Economic Area (EEA). Scripps is particularly active in the UK and in Poland.

In the UK, the proposed transaction would raise no competition issues given the limited overlap between the companies' activities. In Poland, the it risked increasing Discovery's bargaining power vis-à-vis TV distributors because of the acquisition of certain channels that are particularly important in distributors' basic pay-TV channel packages. To address the Commission's concerns, Discovery committed to making TVN24 and its sister channel TVN24 Bis available to current and future TV distributors in Poland for a reasonable fee determined by reference to comparable agreements, for a number of years.

In parallel, the Commission has also rejected a request from Poland to refer the merger to the Polish competition authority for assessment under Polish competition law. The Commission concluded that, given its experience in assessing cases in the media sector, and the need to ensure consistency in the application of merger control rules in this sector across the EEA, it was better placed to deal with this case.

The transaction was notified to the Commission on 8 December 2017.

The European Commission approved on 6 February 2018 the proposed acquisition of Scripps by Discovery, under the EU Merger Regulation. The decision was conditional on full compliance with commitments offered by Discovery.

A request from Poland to refer the merger to the Polish competition authority for assessment under the country's competition law was rejected.

Reuters, 06.02.18: EU clears Discovery bid for Scripps subject to conditions https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1FQ29B

European Commission: DG Competition: Merger Case M.8665 http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cfm?proc_code=2_M_8665

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