RTL Suffers Another Blow As Dutch Regulators Stop Talpa Merger
deadline.comLast year, RTL’s merger plans in France were halted by regulators and it has now suffered the same fate in the Netherlands.
Dutch competition authority ACM has informed RTL Group and John de Mol’s Talpa Network that it won’t approve their planned merger of their channels.
RTL Nederland and Talpa Network had entered into an agreement to merge their operations in June 2021 in a bid to better battle local streamers The official decision won’t come for a few weeks but the deal is already off.
An statement from RTL noted both sides had “fully cooperated” to address the ACM’s concerns of the merged business’ likely domination of the TV ad market, with a proposal to “completely outsource” the advertising sales of Talpa Network’s TV channels to Mediahuis Nederland.
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