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European media giant RTL Group has abandoned plans to merge its Dutch television operations, RTL Nederland, with Talpa Networks, the television group controlled by the television magnate and The voice designer Jean de Mol.
RTL Group said on Monday that Dutch competition authority ACM had informed them of its intention to block the deal, first announced in 2021, which would have created a regional television giant.
This is the second time in less than a year that RTL has seen its expansion plans blocked by regional competition authorities. Last September, RTL backed out of a deal to merge its French commercial network M6 with French broadcaster TF1 after French anti-trust authorities objected to the move.
RTL’s strategy, in France and the Netherlands, was to create “local language champions” with sufficient scale in their respective markets to compete with Netflix and other global broadcasters. The success of streaming platforms poses a threat to traditional free-to-air TV networks in Europe, which are unused to competing with such wealthy tech companies for local viewers.
But the Dutch authorities saw things differently. In a statement, RTL said the ACM believed the RTL-Talpa merger would violate Dutch anti-trust laws because the new company would have a virtual monopoly in the local TV advertising market. Talpa offered to outsource its advertising sales operations to a third party, Mediahuis Nederland, but, according to RTL, the proposal “did not sufficiently mitigate [ACM’s] concerns.
RTL and Talpa criticized the ACM’s decision, saying the Dutch authorities “failed to take into account the speed and scale of the changes in the Dutch media landscape and the impact of these changes on businesses local media…a merger of RTL Nederland and Talpa Network would have been the right strategic response to the challenges arising from increased competition with international platforms.
It will probably be a few weeks before the ACM makes its formal decision, but RTL and Talpa have already canceled the agreement. In a statement, RTL CEO Thomas Rabe said that RTL Nederland “is and will remain a key asset for RTL Group” and that the company remains convinced “that market consolidation is necessary to compete with global technology platforms – and that market consolidation will occur in European TV markets sooner or later.
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