Teresa Ribera, “Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Clean, Just, and Competitive Transition”
A number of major European TV trade groups including the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the European association of television and radio sales houses (egta), and the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe (ACT), have called on the European Union to bring its Digital Markets Act to bear on smart TV operating systems, seeking greater regulation of the largest CTV platforms.
The Digital Markets Act, which came into force back in 2022, gives the EU power to identify ‘gatekeepers’ in various digital markets: companies which provide core platform services, and therefore have a lot of power over other businesses and consumers which use those services. Any companies that are defined as gatekeepers under the law have a set of specific rules they have to comply with, which are designed to ensure those markets operate fairly and remain competitive.
Currently, CTV operating systems aren’t covered by these rules. But in a letter sent to the EU’s antitrust commissioner Teresa Ribera, the TV groups warned that gatekeepers are emerging in the CTV space. “A limited number of operators are therefore gaining growing ability to shape outcomes for millions of users and businesses by controlling access to audiences and content distribution,” said the letter, which was seen by Reuters. “It is crucial that the Commission designate major TV operating systems as gatekeepers and ensure adequate oversight to guarantee fairness and contestability.”
The letter also called for greater scrutiny of virtual assistants, which it says are starting to become “de facto gatekeepers for media content through mobile phones, smart speakers, and in-car radio infotainment services”.
Big tech targeted
CTV operating systems have grown to play a key role in the streaming space. Most obviously, they’re the means through which audiences access streaming content on their TV sets, with the power to promote content and services within their interfaces. They also tend to run their own free ad-supported streaming TV platforms, again giving them power over the discoverability and visibility of channels within that interface. And with their unique audience behaviour datasets, they play a key role in content monetisation too.
The TV trade groups which signed the letter say that through these roles, CTV operating systems have a lot of power over the companies which use them to distribute their content.
“CTVs assume a central intermediary role between media providers and end-users and can therefore exercise significant influence over the discoverability, accessibility and use of media services,” said the letter. “CTV OS providers may have incentives to retain end-users within their own ecosystem and to contractually or technically restrict linking or redirection, e.g. from one media application to another media application. Such restrictions may adversely affect the distribution models of media providers, hinder customary forms of cooperation within the sector — in particular recommendations by aggregating media platforms — and limit functional interoperability between media services.”
The DMA is only designed to target the very largest companies within a specific market, and sets out specific thresholds for identifying gatekeepers. So European broadcasters aren’t pushing for greater regulation for all CTV operating systems, but rather those with the greatest market share.
The letter highlighted the 2024 European market shares of three specific platforms: Android TV, which reportedly had a 23 percent market share, Amazon Fire OS, which sat at 12 percent, and Samsung’s Tizen OS, which held a 24 percent share.
The broadcasters haven’t called for these companies in particular to be targeted, but have rather asked for the EU to designate major CTV OSs as gatekeepers under their current thresholds. If no platforms are found to meet these thresholds, the letter’s signatories have asked the EU to open a market investigation on the basis of the qualitative threshold instead.
If that happened, any CTV operating systems which were found to be acting as gatekeepers would have new obligations around their daily operations. Examples of these include a ban on favouring their own services or products above those of third parties within their interfaces, greater requirements on data sharing, and restrictions on tracking their users for advertising purposes.
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