Mediaset: “Telcos distort the TV market”
October 5, 2017
From David Del Valle in Madrid
The CEO of Mediaset Spain, Paolo Vasile, has accused telco operators – Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange- of distorting the TV market by inflating the prices for football TV rights.
At a conference in Madrid, he expressed concern about the fact that pay-TV is controlled by telco operators. According to him: “This generates distortion in the TV market because these companies with a huge debt of €50 billion [in reference to Telefónica] do not have any problem in spending an amount of money in TV content with no direct relation between the cost of the product and the TV profitability”.
He added that the telco operators are not in touch with reality as TV is only a small business for them, and they’re using TV only to stop churn on their convergent offers.
The CEO of Mediaset said that the telco operators are inflating the prices hindering TV companies access to football TV rights at reasonable costs. “The rights to the Champions League are bought by beIN Sports which then sell them to Telefónica at prices that FTA televisions cannot afford to pay”, he concluded.