RTL Group suffers another setback, this time in the Netherlands

The story repeats itself. RTL Group is once again coming up against the recommendations of a competition authority in Europe. The media group – owner of the M6 ​​group – announced, in a press release published Monday, January 30, that he renounced his plan to merge RTL Nederland with Talpa Network, the audiovisual group founded by John de Mol (co-founder of Endemol, at the origin of the concept of “Loft Story”). In question ? The Dutch competition authority, the ACM, did not validate this operation announced in June 2021, which aimed to create a media giant present in television, radio, streaming, digital, as well as the press. written.

The ACM warned the two companies – which together represented 909 million euros in turnover in 2020 – that the wedding would not take place, but has not yet communicated its decision formally. She feared that by joining forces, RTL Nederland and Talpa Network would gain an overwhelming position in the Dutch television advertising market. The “full cooperation” of the companies concerned and the proposal to outsource the advertising revenues of Talpa’s four television channels were not enough to reassure the regulatory authority.

The ACM’s veto, like the arguments developed by the actors in this prevented marriage, recall the failure of the union between the hexagonal channels TF1 and M6, in September 2022. Given the concessions demanded of them by the French competition authority (the sale of TF1 or M6), the two television groups had then judged that the merger they wanted did not present “no more industrial logic”, and threw in the towel.

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Wrong way out

In a press release published on Monday, RTL Nederland and Talpa Network regretted that the ACM “did not take into account the speed and scale of changes in the Dutch media landscape”. The latter say they continue to believe that a merger of RTL Nederland and Talpa Network would have been the right strategy to face increased competition with international platforms, such as Netflix, Disney +, or even Amazon Prime Video.

“We remain convinced that market consolidation is necessary to compete with global technology platforms – and that market consolidation will happen sooner or later in European TV markets”, insisted Thomas Rabe, the leader of RTL Group, in the same press release. The outcome of this consolidation operation seemed to be off to a bad start after the failure of the TF1-M6 merger, but this second setback in the space of less than six months is nonetheless disappointing for its shareholder, Bertelsmann, and for his boss, Thomas Rabe.

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