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South Africa: Multichoice and SABC breached competition laws

By  |  November 12, 2018

The South Africa Competition Commission has found that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and MultiChoice implemented a merger transaction without notifying it.

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    The matter relates to a content-sharing agreement between the SABC and Multichoice in 2013, which was subsequently called into question following investigations that showed that the agreement included clauses that tried to influence the public broadcaster’s position on encryption.

    The matter had been dismissed by the Competition Tribunal and Competition Appeal Court two times before, but the Commission stated that this was because of the limited evidence presented to the bodies at the time.

    In a statement released on Monday, November 12, the Commission stated that new investigations—which sought more documents from Multichoice and the SABC—turned up new information indicating that the deal was in fact a merger, not a simple agreement.

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