From: Tilman Bohn Newsgroups: rec.autos.sport.f1,rec.autos.sport.misc Subject: [Off-Topic:] FIA Judged to Violate European Anti-Trust Law by German Court Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 22:37:01 +0200 Organization: Not much. Lines: 71 Message-ID: <339DBAED.620AEB63@bohn.isdn.uni-heidelberg.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: bohn.isdn.uni-heidelberg.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (X11; I; Linux 2.0.29 i586) Xref: morgana.mat.uc.pt rec.autos.sport.f1:123513 rec.autos.sport.misc:10657 Hi all, I looked for a thread with this topic before posting, and couldn't find one. If this was due to articles still being upstream from my server, I apologize for any possible repetition. If this was due to articles still being upstream from my server, I apologize for any possible repetition. ;-) Here goes. Just saw a report that a lawsuit filed by the truck-racing people here in Germany against FIA regarding their monopoly on TV rights has been decided against Ecclestone, possibly opening the door for similar judgments in other series. The report was on _Frontal_ (on German TV Jun 10), and I only have the few facts that it's possible to fit into a 7 minute piece, and forgot the names of the protagonists of course, so I'd appreciate not only general comments, but in particular input of more facts of all this. Here's what I remember from the report. Apparently, Ecclestone took over truck racing this year (remember the DTM/ITC desaster in 96, amongst others?), charging his usual horrendous amounts for TV rights. The previous producer sued, claiming FIA infringed upon European cartel laws, and I think today, or maybe a few days ago the court ruled against FIA. Now there are several things that could be immediately affected by this (again, I don't have too many facts to go on, plus I'm not a lawyer or anything -- comments welcome): 1) TV Producers all over Europe might try to get a piece of the cake in other series, possibly including F1. After all, it is hard for me to imagine how this ruling could be in any way particular to truck racing, so it could be valuable precedent. On the other hand, potential plaintiffs in this respect would also be potential Ecclestone licensees, so they may not want to bite the hand that's feeding them. 2) What's gonna happen to Bernie's plans for going public? As the truck racing guy's lawyer put it: who's going to invest in stock from a company whose primary asset is TV rights -- rights which it may not own? 3) In the long run, could the whole Ecclestone empire get into trouble in similar ways? If you look at the way everything's tied up, couldn't there be some even more fundamental monopoly issues others may want to uncover, encouraged by this judgment? I think most if not all of the growing dissatisfaction with F1 and the racing circus on the whole (as witnessed in these newsgroups) is in large part due to, or at least enhanced by, the Evilsto... oops, Ecclestone empire's monopoly position. All right, in reality it's more of an oligopoly, but it's probably as close to monopoly as you can get in real life. I could be writing about Microsoft here, or intel, or AT&T. It's always the same -- at the end of the day, it's the customer who suffers (that's us, the viewers), be it through increased price or through decreased quality. In F1 we see both, and at an ever-rising rate. I sure hope there'll be some more lawsuits to bring back some sort of normalcy to the racing tracks in the world. But that's just me. Thank you for your time. -- Cheers, Tilman Bohn ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik "I am the assassin with tongue Abteilung fuer Kosmophysik forged from eloquence Heidelberg, Germany I am the assassin providing your nemesis" -Marillion ------------------------------------------------------------------------