Bell did unduly disadvantage TVA Sports: CRTC

The CRTC has ruled on two applications in which rivals BCE Inc. and Quebecor Inc. accused each other of an undue preference when it came to the packaging of the other company’s TV content, concluding that Bell unduly disadvantaged Quebecor’s TVA Sports. In March, Quebecor filed a complaint with the CRTC, saying that Bell has conferred an undue preference on its own RDS French-language sports channel by including it in its popular “Bon” TV bundle package, but excluding TVA Sports from that package. In a decision Thursday, the CRTC agreed. It said that “sports services rely on revenues resulting from broad distribution to be able to acquire costly sports rights. Therefore, the additional revenues RDS enjoys from subscribers to Bon, who might not otherwise want the service, grant Bell a competitive advantage, in particular to secure distribution rights for sports programs.” The CRTC concluded that the “the exclusion of TVA Sports from Bon, in contrast to RDS, has had, and continues to have, a material adverse impact on TVA’s operations.” It gave Bell until Feb. 5 to report back with a new packaging structure. In a separate decision, it also ruled on a complaint by Bell which said Videotron removed Bell’s film and TV show service Super Écran from its premium pack selection, giving its competitor Club Illico a comparative advantage. The regulator said Quebecor did indeed confer a preference on Club Illico, but it wasn’t undue. While the change to “the packaging of services has had a significant impact on Super Écran’s visibility, as it is now difficult for potential subscribers to find it,” the decision said that hasn’t been correlated with a “material adverse impact on Super Écran or on the broadcasting system,” meaning the preference isn’t undue. “It is possible that the packaging change has accelerated the rate of decline in the number of subscribers and that this change will have a more significant impact in the future,” it said. “However, given that the period covered by the complaint is short, the Commission considers that there is insufficient data to conclusively determine whether or not this decline was due directly to the repackaging of the service or to the more general decline in subscribers.” The two applications came as part of a long-running conflict between the two competitors. Quebecor cut the signal for TVA Sports from Bell TV subscribers at the start of the NHL playoffs, citing what it said was an unfair wholesale rate its own sports service nets compared to Bell’s. Bell then launched a $135-million lawsuit, and Quebecor an appeal of the CRTC’s decision to force Bell to keep carrying TVA Sports. In the decision on Super Écran, the CRTC indicated that bringing a Part 1 application was unnecessary. It said that “the matters raised in this application would have been more appropriately dealt with in the context of the parties’ ongoing negotiations, where the parties could have resolved the dispute bilaterally with the help of staff-assisted mediation.”

Bell did unduly disadvantage TVA Sports: CRTC

Brief | December 19, 2019

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Bell did unduly disadvantage TVA Sports: CRTC

Brief | December 19, 2019

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