Gruner + Jahr withdraws notification of purchase of “National Geographic” licence after Bundeskartellamt expresses concerns

At the end of January 2019, the publishing house Gruner + Jahr withdrew its notification of the purchase of the licence to publish the German-language edition of the “National Geographic” magazine. Prior to this the Bundeskartellamt had informed the company of its competition concerns about the project.

Gruner + Jahr is by far the largest publisher of popular science magazines in Germany and publishes the “GEO” magazine, which in terms of distribution and turnover is the largest science magazine on the German market.

The German-language edition of the “National Geographic” magazine of the National Geographic Society is a documentary and science magazine which covers nature and geographic topics and also contains articles on history, ethnology and other popular science topics.

Gruner + Jahr has already held the licence for the German language edition of the “National Geographic” for several years. However, the current licence was time-limited and had to be re-awarded on expiry of the licence period.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: “According to our preliminary assessment, the renewed purchase of the licence by Gruner + Jahr would have significantly impeded competition between science magazines. National Geographic and GEO are the leading magazines and closest competitors in this market in Germany. In addition to GEO, Gruner + Jahr publishes the P.M. Magazine which is also well-known on this market. Gruner + Jahr’s dominant position in print publications is not sufficiently controlled by competition from alternative internet or TV offers. Like other print media, the classical science magazines have for years experienced a decline in circulation due to a general change in media use behaviour. However, investigations have shown that internet offers are not a direct substitute for readers of classical magazines. In spite of the decline in circulation, publishers were able to continually raise the price of their magazines for the remaining readers. If Gruner + Jahr had re-purchased the licence for the National Geographic” magazine, the possibilities for interested readers to switch to the product of another publisher in future would have still been very limited.”

The merger project was examined in second phase merger control proceedings. The Bundeskartellamt’s concerns are based on extensive market investigations at various magazine publishers, TV companies and providers of digital information offers. The parties did not comment on the authority’s concerns. Due to the withdrawal of the notification, the proceeding was concluded without a formal decision by the Bundeskartellamt. The merger project cannot therefore be implemented.

Further information on this proceeding is available in a case summary (in German).