The Bundeskartellamt has today cleared the merger between Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA (RTL Group) and RTL Disney Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG (SuperRTL) in the first phase of merger control. RTL already holds 50% of the shares in the children’s TV channel SuperRTL and plans to acquire the remaining 50% from the current co-shareholder Disney.

The merger affects in particular the German TV advertising market on which the Bundeskartellamt last established in 2011 that RTL and ProSiebenSat.1 held a joint dominant position. Whether they still hold such a position could be left open in the present case.
Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: The RTL Group’s acquisition of Disney’s share in SuperRTL will not considerably worsen the competition conditions in the (TV advertising) market. Together with ProSiebenSat.1, RTL has a significant mar-ket position in TV advertising. However, the acquisition will not substantially improve this position for several reasons, one being that RTL already had a 50% stake in the children’s TV channel and so was already able to benefit from its advertising activi-ties. With the exit of RTL’s competitor Disney from SuperRTL, the merger might also have some pro-competitive effects.”

In its investigations the Bundeskartellamt has again closely examined what connec-tions and overlaps exist between TV advertising and online video advertising. To this effect it requested information from a large number of media agencies and advertising customers as well as some TV channels. Their answers indicate that from the sector’s perspective there is still no wide substitutability between TV ad-vertising and online video advertising. The explanations given by those questioned were the existing reach of linear TV, the possibility to quickly expand reach with TV advertising and the high degree of target group penetration. TV advertising is de-scribed as a mass communication medium, the major advantage of which was its 'lean-back' usage.

Irrespective of the question of the actual substitutability of the different advertising formats, the Bundeskartellamt has taken into account that online video advertising exerts competitive pressure on TV advertising to a certain extent.