OTTAWA – Its game over for Telus’ complaints against Bell over exclusive mobile rights agreements to select National Hockey League (NHL) and National Football League (NFL) content, the CRTC said Thursday.
In a letter addressed to Mirko Bibic, Bell’s SVP of regulatory and government affairs, the Commission said that it accepts Bell’s report that the two agreements in question were entered into prior to the issuance of a temporary moratorium against certain new exclusive programming agreements, and before the vertical integration framework prohibition against carriage exclusives on new media platforms.
The Commission also acknowledged that Bell has since reached a new, non-exclusive mobile content agreement with the NHL, and accepted that Bell has no right to sub-license its NFL content to a third party mobile service provider, noting the NFL’s opposition to amending its current agreement with Bell.
The CRTC had originally agreed with Telus that the two content deals awarded Bell a competitive advantage, as Cartt.ca reported. Going forward, such deals won't be allowed under the vertical integration regs.
