As the COMCO established, the Swisscom Group with its subsidiaries (Cinetrade AG and Teleclub AG) holds a dominant position in live broadcasting of games from the Swiss football and ice hockey championships on pay-TV.
While holding a dominant position is not in itself forbidden, the abuse thereof can be prohibited and sanctioned by the Competition Commission under the Swiss Cartel Act. As the COMCO states, Swisscom has abused its dominant position in several respects to restrain other competitors in platform competition.
For one, Swisscom refused to provide some competitors with any kind of offering to broadcast live sports on their platforms while to other competitors like e.g. Cablecom, Swisscom only granted access to a reduced range of sports content, providing them only with the limited Teleclub content.
Furthermore, the COMCO found that the competitors were discriminated against because, unlike Swisscom TV, they were obliged to only offer their customers the sports contents coupled with a basic package from Teleclub.
If this means that ice hockey transmissions will be more readily available and on different platforms in the future remains to be seen. The Swiss Ice Hockey Federation had just recently launched the tender procedure for several packages of audiovisual rights to games of the National Team, the NLA, NLB and Regio League starting in the 2017-18 season.
However, as Swisscom announces they will appeal the decision: "Given the very high fine and the decision’s fundamental character, an appeal will be lodged with the Federal Administrative Court and, if necessary, the Federal Supreme Court." (mso)
