Swiss telecommunications group Swisscom has filed a complaint against rival telco UPC to the country’s Competition Commission (Weko) over the latter’s failure to grant access to its exclusive ice hockey rights to all operators.
In July, UPC unveiled plans for a new sports broadcast platform which it said would “breathe new life” into the media market in Switzerland.
MySports was formed following UPC’s rights deal with the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation. The SIHF earlier awarded its media rights for the five seasons from 2017-18 to 2021-22, with UPC and public-service broadcaster SRG SSR clinching contracts.
UPC will be the SIHF’s new main partner having secured rights to club competitions National League A and B, Regio League and the Swiss national teams. Swisscom had previously held rights through its Teleclub subsidiary and has claimed that UPC’s failure to provide it with access to MySports represents an abuse of its dominant market position.
However, UPC has fired back by stating it has no intention of granting access to Swisscom, adding that it has already stuck carriage deals for MySports with 14 operators.
“With MySports we have set ourselves the goal of breaking the long-standing monopoly of Swisscom/Teleclub in the sports sector,” UPC spokesman Bernard Strapp said, according to the Swissinfo.ch website.
“We are investing a large amount of the money in order to protect these investments and will not pass the MySports signal to Swisscom.”
Swisscom’s complaint comes after Weko in May fined the telco CHF71.8m (€67.2m/$73m) for abusing its dominant position in live sports broadcasting on pay television.