DECRYPTION – Bouygues and RTL Group respond to the competition report. But does the merger still have an interest?
Bouygues and RTL Group responded on Friday August 12 to the report published on July 26 by the services of the Competition Authority on the merger between their subsidiaries TF1 and M6. They refined their arguments and proposed a series of remedies on all aspects of the case. The services of the competition police consider very clearly that this operation poses many problems, in particular on the television advertising market in France, because the two entities would hold 75% of it.
Bouygues and RTL Group are determined to convince the Authority, during the hearings scheduled for September 5 and 6, that their project is relevant: they must strengthen their core business, linear TV, to free up sufficient resources to finance the major shift towards the platformization of content in free (AVOD) and paid (SVOD) video-on-demand services. The upcoming arrivals of subscription offers from the giants Netflix and Disney+ including…