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MultiChoice to get end of July verdict in EPL TV content row

chelsea

Chelsea’s John Terry celebrates with the English Premier League trophy after winning the league in May. file photo | nmg

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.

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“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.

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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.