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Business of TV Sport
Sportel Monaco 2011

Mediaset loses DTT subsidy battle in the European Courts

The European Court of Justice has confirmed an earlier European Commission ruling that the Italian government subsidy for digital-terrestrial decoders, which helped commercial broadcaster Mediaset to rapidly build a successful football and film pay-per-view service to rival Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Italia, was an illegal form of state aid.
In throwing out Mediaset’s appeal against the commission ruling, the court said that because the subsidy was not “technologically neutral” – it benefited digital terrestrial operators like Mediaset Premium at the expense of satellite operators like Sky – the subsidy could not be justified under European state aid rules.

The €150 subsidy, which significantly reduced the cost to consumers of a digital terrestrial decoder, together with the rights to the matches of the top Serie A clubs, helped Mediaset Premium to rapidly build a customer base which now stands at 4.25 million. The subsidy was introduced in 2004 by a government head by Silvio Berlusconi, the owner of Mediaset.