A Belgian MEP has submitted a request to the EU Commission to investigate Liberty Media on suspicion of an illegal monopoly
Formula One rights holder Liberty Media is facing further trouble. After the US Congress has already intervened due to the rejection of Andretti, an investigation could now also follow from the European side, because the EU Commission has received a request to examine compliance with competition rules. The accusation: monopoly.
The application comes from a Belgian MEP named Pascal Arimont, who represents the German-speaking community of Belgium for the Christian Social Party and lives near the Formula 1 circuit of Spa-Francorchamps.
He wants the European Commission to address the issue “to protect consumers and ensure fair competition,” reports the newspaper Het Belang van Limburg.
The reason for this is the majority takeover (86 percent) of MotoGP promoter Dorna, which also gives Liberty Media control over MotoGP. So far, the Americans already have the rights to Formula 1, Formula 2 and Formula 3, while sister organization Liberty Global also controls Formula E. Therefore, Arimont now sees a monopoly.
In this context, the politician also refers to the case of Andretti, who would like to join as the eleventh team and have also received the green light from the FIA, but are being prevented from doing so by Liberty Media.
“Commercial agreements make it difficult for new teams to enter Formula One and may restrict competition in an illegal way,” he says. EU law states that no company can obtain a monopoly position and thus prevent competition.
Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, now has six weeks to deal with the application and respond to it.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that the EU has questioned the practices of Formula One. As early as 1997, measures were announced against Bernie Ecclestone’s monopoly, and in 2006, the merger of Formula One and MotoGP was prevented by EU law because CVC Capital Partners wanted to acquire shares in Formula One even though it owned MotoGP promoter Dorna.
The European Commission only gave the green light after it had sold its shares in MotoGP.
