Sony, Zee offer concessions to ease Competition Commission’s worry over merger

A unit of Sony Group and Zee Entertainment have proposed offering concessions such as pricing discounts to help ease concerns of antitrust regulator Competition Commission of India over their merger, which will create a Rs 79,000 crore ($10-billion) TV behemoth, two sources told Reuters.

The concessions are a bid to iron out antitrust worries of the CCI, which in an Aug. 3 notice warned the companies of further scrutiny, saying their “humongous market position” would allow them to enjoy “un-paralleled bargaining power” with 92 channels in India’s massive media and entertainment market.

In particular, the CCI was concerned over how big an impact on competition the merged entity would have in terms of advertising and channel pricing, particularly in the popular Hindi language segment.