The court’s decision, responding to a complaint by porn and football channel Conto TV, was heavily influenced by the opinion of Italy’s antitrust authority. L’Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato – which opened its own investigation into the league’s television deals this July – argues that the league should have created multiple packages of rights in such a way as to guarantee competition for rights within each technology platform, rather than in the pay-television market in general.
One senior European antitrust lawyer questioned this position: “This is quite a significant regulatory intervention and, at first sight, it is arguably disproportionate to require the Lega Calcio to tender the rights in such an artificial way.”
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