Paramount Studios deal may end geo-blocking in EU
Hollywood studio agrees to allow Europeans to access Pay TV beyond their borders -and other studios are watching.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
Paramount Studios has reached a deal with the European Union to end geographic blocking of its films in licence deals with TV channels.
The move, which is in place for 5 years, means the European Union’s 500 million people will no longer be blocked from subscribing to TV channels in the UK and Ireland.
Last year, Europe’s top regulator accused Paramount and five studios of illegally curbing European access to movies and TV shows through anti-competitive contracts with Britain’s SKY TV, part of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century FOX.
The European Commission said chopping the TV market into small pieces along national borders goes against EU “single market” rules.
“European consumers want to watch the Pay TV channels of their choice regardless of where they live or travel in the EU,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU commissioner in charge of competition, said last year.
But the case is being closely watched by the film industry. Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros are yet to follow Paramount’s move.
However the deal is not all-encompassing, requiring individual consumers to make an unsolicited request for access to Pay TV networks.
Source: Yahoo
5 Responses
Hopefully this is the thin end of the wedge.
Being able to better access shows the same time as seen in the USA is improving but obviously it’s going to cost consumers now Foxtel have some competition. There’s still plenty of scope for pay TV and especially for movie and TV studios to stream their own product around the World at some point in the future but we will have to wait and see.
“…people will no longer be blocked from subscribing to TV channels in the UK…”
Well, if the UK follows through on leaving the EU, then it might mean exactly that unless the European Broadcasting Union gets involved.
And so it begins…..
Brexit surely renders that deal somewhat void.
Unless though there are non-exclusive rights across the continent all such deals do is become anti-competitive – rights end up being sold on a European wise basis and that favours the likes of Sky far more than it does their competitors in individual countries.