Media mergers – more complex than ever?

Like many other industries, the media sector is undergoing significant disruption, with linear TV increasingly losing relevance amid the rise of streaming platforms and alternatives such as social media. Regulators worldwide take these changes into account when assessing cooperations and transactions – particularly with regard to market definitions. Many cases have led to in-depth reviews touching upon those aspects in recent years. With the European Media Freedom Act now in force, mergers in the media world could become even more complicated.

Transactions and cooperations in the media sector have traditionally faced high regulatory hurdles – not only regarding formal notification requirements but also substantive concerns. Many jurisdictions either have special merger control rules for these types of cases or even have additional regimes to consider aspects going beyond normal competition concerns.

Media cases are often subject to intense public debate, with numerous stakeholders expressing their individual views. Moreover, the boundaries between purely competitive concerns and political considerations often blur.

This in turn often puts regulators in the spotlight and under pressure to consider political aspects in their assessment. Recent case law demonstrates how the evolving trends have impacted merger control assessments. The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) may further complicate life for deal planners.

No easy antitrust cases

Over the past twelve months, the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) reviewed three cooperations and transactions in this sector, with only one resulting in a positive outcome for the parties following extensive review periods (see our recent post here).

• The first case concerned the envisaged merger of Super RTL and Nickelodeon. After the FCO indicated that it had the intention to block their merger, the parties abandoned the deal (and withdrew their notification). The concerns mainly related to video advertising aimed at children where, according to the FCO at the time, streaming services did not play a major role.
• With a similar reasoning, the FCO stopped a joint TV marketing initiative by RTL and RTL2. The FCO was concerned that the marketing cooperation would lead “to clear disadvantages for competition and most likely higher prices for advertising customers”. With a view to “new players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney” it noted that “their advertising activities so far are not important enough to exert considerable pressure on the placing of advertisements in linear TV.”
• Most recently, the FCO cleared a joint marketing project between RTL2 and Warner Bros. largely because the case only involved smaller players. Interestingly enough it held that “we no longer consider the market to be limited to TV advertising; we rather see it as a big-screen advertising market that includes TV advertising, but also, and in particular, the offerings provided by Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney and, to a certain extent, also YouTube.”

But media mergers faced intense scrutiny in recent years not only in Germany. The proposed merger between the TFI1 and M6 group was abandoned back in 2022, after the French Competition Authority (FCA)  raised concerns. At the time, the parties expressed regret that the FCA had not adequately considered the speed and extent of changes sweeping through the French broadcasting sector. The parties are reportedly considering revisiting their plans and hope for a softer approach by the regulator this time.

In the Netherlands, the antitrust regulator ACM only conditionally cleared the acquisition of RTL Nederland by DPG Media. Different from the other cases mentioned above, the ACM in particular stressed negative effects on media pluralism and requested remedies to mitigate those concerns.

A look across the Atlantic would go beyond the scope of this blog, but reports from there also suggest that regulators are taking a close look at the media media deals these days with, e.g., the Department of Justice looking into the Disney/Fubo deal.

More on the horizon: The European Media Freedom Act

But it is not only antitrust companies in the media world should keep in mind when they plan mergers and cooperations. The EMFA entered into force in May 2024 and became fully applicable across the EU on 8 August 2025. Its primary aim is to safeguard media pluralism and editorial independence, but it also introduces a new EU-wide framework for assessing media mergers.

EMFA is a EU regulation, meaning it is directly applicable in all Member States without the need for national transposition. However, some provisions – especially those concerning media merger assessments – require complementary national legislation to ensure effective implementation.

It is particularly new that the EMFA expands the universe of transactions that require scrutiny. Different from the German Interstate Media Treaty which basically only focuses on traditional private television (and therefore only plays a minor role in practice), the definition of “media services” reaches more broadly than traditional newspapers and broadcasters – potentially encompassing online platforms, news websites and services that “inform, entertain or educate,” depending on national transposition and implementing rules. That means many transactions that would previously have been seen purely as tech or content deals may now fall within a dual-screening perimeter: Competition regulators for market effects, and media regulators for pluralism and editorial independence.

Further, Member States must provide a separate, substantive review for mergers that “could have a significant impact on media pluralism and editorial independence.” In practice this creates a parallel procedural hurdle: Even where competition regulators give their green light, a national media-pluralism assessment can still delay, condition or block a deal.

Importantly, the EMFA is “without prejudice” to existing competition law — it does not replace antitrust merger control. But it explicitly recognises that Member States may adopt measures to protect legitimate interests such as plurality, and requires coordination between media and competition regulators.

Strategic Considerations

For practitioners, this means adapting to a new regulatory environment, where competition law and media policy intersect. Media mergers are now more than ever not only about market shares in developing and rapidly changing markets – which is complex enough. For media companies, the new regime might mean that they (i) have to work with potentially longer deal timelines; (ii) have to expect a generally higher risk of intervention where even more stakeholders can have a say; and (iii) might need to develop a broader political strategy for dealing with national media regulators.

Photo by Olena Bohovyk on Unsplash