Spain’s telecoms regulator CNMC has announced that its investigation of Telefonica’s proposed takeover of Spanish pay-TV platform Digital+ has entered a second, more in-depth, stage. In May Telefonica reached a deal to purchase the 56 percent stake in Digital+ owned by Prisa for EUR 750 million before subsequently agreeing to acquire Mediaset’s 22 percent stake in Digital+ for an initial EUR 295 million. Although a deal of this size would normally be assessed by the European Commission in view of the figures involved, in August the EC announced that the Spanish regulator would be allowed to probe the takeover. The CNMC said the deeper investigation was prompted by the fact that the deal “could significantly hinder competition in the markets related to paid television, audiovisual content and electronic communications services."
The acquisition of Digital+ brings with it a large customer base in the form of the 1.6 million subscribers to pay-TV channel Canal+ and would give Telefonica access to Prisa’s TV catalogue, including its rights to live Spanish football games. Above all, the regulator believes that Telefonica’s integration of Digital+ TV content into its Movistar Fusion convergent packages could result in a situation where it could choose to no longer offer some of the Digital+ pay-TV channels to the competing operators that currently acquire them.
In August, Vodafone Spain's CEO Antonio Coimbra called on the CNMC to be “implacable” in its investigation of the proposed takeover of Digital+, which he said would give Telefonica access to 62 percent of Spain’s pay-TV customers and 82 percent of the sector's revenues.
