Chelsea’s John Terry celebrates with the English Premier League trophy after winning the league in May. file photo | nmg
Summary
- The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) said its investigations into the local pay-TV market had found that MultiChoice has unfair monopoly of football content, skewing competition in its favour.
- The inquiry, which has lasted for more than two years, found that MultiChoice’s hold onto exclusive EPL and Kenya Premier League (KPL) rights.
- SuperSport has since terminated its contract with the KPL.
MultiChoice Kenya, the owners of pay-tv
operator DStv, is at the end of the month expected to know whether it
will be forced to re-sell exclusive English Premier League (EPL) rights
to rivals, the competitions regulator said yesterday.
The
Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) said its investigations into the
local pay-TV market had found that MultiChoice has unfair monopoly of
football content, skewing competition in its favour and forcing some
players to exit Kenya.
The regulator says in its latest
annual report that the CAK has made its preliminary findings known to
the pay-TV firm and that the final verdict will be out by end of the
month.
“We have engaged MultiChoice on several
occasions on the issues we found and issued them with our proposed
ruling,” CAK director-general Wang’ombe Kariuki said, adding that there
has been a lot of back on forth on the issue.
“I expect that we should have closed it in the next two to three weeks.”
“MultiChoice
is fully co-operating with CAK as we have always done with all
authorities. We are awaiting the report and cannot comment further until
then,” said MultiChoice in a statement.
The inquiry, which has lasted for more than two years,
found that MultiChoice’s hold onto exclusive EPL and Kenya Premier
League (KPL) rights, and the airing of the content on SuperSport
channels has disadvantaged firms like Wananchi Group, which owns Zuku.
SuperSport has since terminated its contract with the KPL.
Late
last year, MultiChoice contested CAK’s preliminary findings that would
have forced them to re-sell the rights to rivals at a commercially
viable rate.
DStv, which is Kenya’s market leader in the pay-TV segment, opted to go to full-hearing.
Naspers,
MultiChoice’s South Africa-based parent company, has also rebuffed any
claims of wrongdoing, saying exclusivity is at the core of their
business and that anybody can buy the rights if they want to from the
UK’s Premier League.
“Investigations (have been)
concluded and a notice of proposed decision issued to MultiChoice
pursuant to the provisions of section 24 of the Competition Act,” the
CAK states in the 2015/2016 annual report released this week.
This
section of the law stipulates that an entity found to be abusing its
dominant position in the market is liable to “imprisonment for a term
not exceeding five years or to a fine not exceeding ten million
shillings or to both.”
A firm can abuse its dominant
position in several ways including limiting production or restricting
distribution of a good or service through predatory or other means, the
law states. The pay-TV provider, which entered Kenya in 1995, has in the
recent past been facing mounting pressure from regulators and rivals to
free up its channels, claiming it was making it difficult for other
players to break even.
MultiChoice gained a grip of the
local market through broadcasting Britain’s popular Premier League,
which showcases teams like Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and
Liverpool among others.
SuperSport spent Sh25.2 billion
to secure the rights for sub-Saharan Africa between the years 2013 and
2016, a fee that is set to grow to Sh36.4 billion for the three-year
period beginning August 2016.
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