Austar Takeover by Foxtel

Seems like the ACCC is set to give the green lights to Foxtel to takeover its regional counterpart Austar Limited on the condition that content is made available to IPTV operators that are competing with both of them.

On an interview with ABC News, the chairman of ACCC, Rod Sims, has made it clear that the worry is what the takeover means to Telstra's market power. Telstar is a 50% owner of Austar. The other shareholders in Foxtel are James Packer's Consolidated Media Holdings and Rupert Murdoch's News Limited, publisher of The Australian.

A very good article to read would be 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mergers-acquisitions/foxtel-austar-fall-into-line-as-accc-warns-on-net-sports-rights/story-fn91vdzj-1226292610886

However, I wonder what would the market participants come up with in the next fortnight to scuttle the deal. The ACCC chairmans seems to have partly confirmed the deal will go through with the undertakings that Foxtel and Austars agreed to, but I am pretty sure the other ISPs are not too keen on this merger happening.

One of the points are Fox Sports (Sports content)  is still exclusive to Foxtel. This is one major area of monetisation for IPTV, thus a few issues might be raised here. With Austar under the wings of Foxtel, who else can negotiate to get sports contents in Australia and the rest of the world? The smaller IPTV operators will never gain enough clout/money/reputation to get the rights to sports. However, the ACCC chairman, says they will look into this in future if there is monopoly (brushing this matter aside, which is absurd). I believe they should undertake to make sports a non-exclusive content if they are really looking at opening up the market and do away with the monopoly.

However, Australia is a pretty strange country where monopoly or duopoly exists and the ACCC has been very accommodative at times. The financial sector,wealth management sector and more prominently the retail/supermarket sector has witnessed this.

I am not too keen to get involved, although markets seems to be pointing towards the deal happening.