Economic and Other Welfare in Media Merger Control: Analysis Of National Competition Authorities’ Reviews

• In Event: Changing Audiovisual Media Markets and Regulation

Abstract

This contribution analyses the nature of arguments and sources of various actors mentioned in media concentration reviews and the extent to which they reflect economic, political and socio-cultural welfare. A claim analysis is conducted of the Belgian and Dutch National Competition Authorities’ (hereafter: NCAs’) formal decisions on eight selected cases of proposed media mergers (hereafter: ‘merger reviews’). It builds on insights from media economy, media policy, competition policy and regulation studies. The findings showed that a majority (92.3%) of claims in merger reviews exclusively reflected economic welfare in their topics (e.g. definition of relevant market, competition and market power). A minor share (0.7%) of the claims contained exclusively political and socio-cultural welfare topics (e.g. consumer choice, editorial control, opinion power). These non-economic welfare topics occurred mostly in combination with economic welfare topics (7.1%) and tended to argue more often against than in favour of a merger case. While this observation concurred with NCAs’ remit, showing they are ‘doing their job’, the limited presence of non-economic topics in their decisions warrants the question whether media merger reviews sufficiently address the media’s political and socio-cultural value and supports the need for an approach that incorporate this perspective.

Authors

• Miriam van der Burg, U of Antwerp

• Hilde Dy Van den Bulck, U of Antwerp