The UK’s BBC and ITV free-to-air (FTA) broadcasters, alongside heavyweight agency and production company IMG, and telecoms heavyweight BT, have been fined £4.24 million ($5.49 million) collectively for breaching competition law.
The fine relates to sharing information regarding compensation for freelance employees such as technicians and camera operators – with the overall aim of using this information to ensure no single broadcaster was paying more than others. This breaches competition law, and affected employees at soccer and rugby matches, according to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulator.
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UK pay-TV broadcaster Sky, meanwhile – despite being found to be the worst offender – managed to escape a fine by the CMA on the basis that it was the broadcaster that alerted the authorities, leading to an investigation being opened in 2022. Sky was found to have engaged in 10 instances of anti-competitive behavior.
BT, which has since had its sports broadcasting assets bought by Warner Bros. Discovery, leading to the rebranding of BT Sport as TNT Sports, will pay a fine of £1.7 million for six offenses, IMG will pay the same figure, while the BBC will fork out £424,000 and ITV £340,000.
The CMA has now said that “the explicit aim was to coordinate how much to pay freelancers,” across the 2014-21 period (each company had distinct offence times during that overall timeframe), and that 15 separate offences were identified overall.
The investigation found that one of the companies told another that they “want to be aligned and benchmark the rates” and had “no intention of getting into a bidding war."
Juliette Enser, executive director for competition enforcement at the CMA, has said: “Companies should set rates independently of each other so pay is competitive – not doing so could leave workers out of pocket. Employers must ensure those who hire staff know the rules and stick to them to prevent this happening in the future.”
All of the fined companies, meanwhile, said they had cooperated with the CMA and its investigation.
Specifically, the BBC commented that “we highly value the freelancers we work with,” and Sky said they had “taken steps to further strengthen our internal policies and procedures to ensure compliance with competition law rules moving forward.”
IMG, meanwhile, said they have “taken all necessary steps to address any prior compliance issues.”
All of the fines were discounted, on the basis that the broadcasters and IMG all settled early.
