The ACCC has announced it will not oppose Seven West Media’s proposed acquisition of Prime Media Group.
For context, Seven West Media is a national media company – you know the network that bought you, Farmer Wants A Wife. The media company has publishing, commercial television and digital operations and recently won the ratings war.
Prime Media Group is a regional television broadcaster and is the company’s primary broadcasting agreement affiliate, and the ACCC has given Seven West Media the green light to go ahead and acquire Prime Media Group.
Seven West Media has long been clear about its goal to acquire Prime.
The ACCC has found that the companies are not close competitors in the supply of advertising opportunities or media content.
Of course, this isn’t the first time this deal almost happened. In 2019, the ACCC reviewed a similar proposal and didn’t oppose merging the groups.
However, it didn’t go ahead because it didn’t get approval from some of Prime’s shareholders.
ACCC Chair Rod Sims, said in a statement via the website: “Given the importance of media markets, we decided to conduct a public review for this proposed acquisition. Despite not opposing the 2019 proposed acquisition, we thought it was important to still closely scrutinise this transaction.
“We focused our assessment on whether there had been any material changes in the relevant markets since the ACCC’s 2019 review.”
“We received minimal engagement from market participants, including rival media companies, and feedback received indicated there had been no material changes in the relevant markets.
“Consistent with our findings in 2019, we concluded that the proposed acquisition was unlikely to substantially lessen competition or choice for advertisers and consumers.
“This is because Seven West Media and Prime are not particularly close competitors in the supply of advertising opportunities or the supply of media content, and other competitors will constrain the merged entity.”
So, assumedly if Seven West Media is testing the water again they are thinking they’ll get a different result, this time around.
