When tickets for Taylor Swift’s latest tour went on sale in November, Ticketmaster was overwhelmed by forces inside and outside of its control, which resulted in a ticketing fiasco. Looking for reasons, many seized upon Ticketmaster’s market power in ticketing and the broader live music industry, especially after its 2010 merger with Live Nation. As FTC Chair Lina Khan quipped,
At the end of June 2022, the yearly conference of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) took place in Porto. In between panels of what is perhaps the most important antitrust conference of the year, Kay and Friso caught up with some fellow academics. They talked to Magali Eben about collegiality in the competition law community, with Francesco Ducci
The European Commission’s cases against Microsoft in the 2000s set the framework for the assessment of abusive conduct related to product integration and interoperability, and Microsoft became the first “big tech” company with direct experience of the power of antitrust enforcers. In this episode we explore how Microsoft adapted its conduct in light of the imposed remedies and their continuous
Depending on the day of the week, Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world, or at least in the top 5. It’s one of GAFAM, the five “big tech” companies presumptively labeled as “digital gatekeepers” to which new ex-ante antitrust rules will apply under the EU’s forthcoming Digital Markets Act. Founded in 1975, it’s the oldest of the
At the start of 2022, the gaming market was shaken up by a series of acquisitions, including Microsoft/Activison Blizard, Sony/Bungee and – last but not least – New York Times/Wordle. In this episode, we examine the current state of the gaming market, the innovation on the horizon, and how competition authorities may assess recent acquisitions. (Recorded 7 February
In May 2020, Facebook (now Meta) acquired the gif library GIPHY. The UK’s competition authority (the CMA) started investigating the merger and finally, in November 2021, ordered Facebook to sell GIPHY again. In this episode, we examine the CMA’s merger control assessment and the more interventionist approach to digital markets it exemplifies (Recorded 27 January 2022)
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In this episode, we walk through the General Court hearing in the Google Android case, which took place in Luxembourg from 27 September until 1 October. Google appealed to the General Court the European Commission’s 2018 4.3B EUR fine for abuse of market power. We discuss the major points of contention, including market definition and power, pre-installation agreements and
In this episode, we look at the Commission’s draft Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (VBER) and associated Guidelines, which are set to replace the existing 11 year old legislation in advance of its expiration. The Commission has been consulting on this revision since 2018, culminating in a draft published in July 2021. We go through some noteworthy changes, which reflect
In this episode, we dive into Google’s latest antitrust commitments in Europe. In June, we saw commitment decisions on Google’s ad-tech stack and its planned ‘Privacy Sandbox’ (under French and UK competition authorities’ oversight) as well as voluntary changes to the Android choice screen (overseen by the European Commission since 2018). We examine what this less adversarial approach from Google
In this episode, we wrap up our 3-part introduction on the EU’s proposed Digital Markets Act (DMA), with a critical look at defenses and differences with traditional antitrust, the potential to harmonise national rules for platform conduct, and possible consequences of the DMA as proposed.
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