Brussels should ask: is this really consumer choice?
By Max Bono
European regulators like to talk about competition.
More providers. More packages. More choice.
But football fans should ask a much simpler question:
Can I actually buy what I want to watch?
Take an AC Milan supporter.
I don't want three random Serie A matches every weekend.
I want Milan.
And this is where the supposed consumer choice in modern football broadcasting starts to look very different from real choice.
Three games are not three games of your choice
A cheaper package may offer three Serie A matches per matchday.
Sounds like a choice.
But the supporter does not choose the three matches.
The broadcaster does.
For a neutral football viewer, that might be enough.
For a Milan fan, three matches involving other clubs can be almost worthless.
Because Inter–Torino is not a substitute for Milan–Juventus.
Football supporters do not consume football like interchangeable products.
The real product is not simply:
Serie A.
The real product is:
My team.
And if the cheaper package cannot guarantee access to Milan, the Milan supporter faces a problem.
The “personalised” alternative is hardly an alternative
There is, of course, a team-specific product: MyClubPass.
At first sight, that sounds like exactly what consumers should want.
A Milan fan can buy Milan.
Problem solved?
Not really.
Because if a pass allowing you to watch only one team costs almost as much as the Full Pass giving access to everything, the consumer is presented with a rather strange form of choice.
You can pay almost the full price to watch one team.
Or pay slightly more and watch everything.
The economically rational choice is obvious.
Buy the Full Pass.
And that is the real problem.
The system does not need to force a Milan fan to buy the Full Pass. It only needs to make every alternative economically irrational.
On paper, there are different products.
In practice, they all lead in the same direction.
The most expensive package.
Football is not Netflix
Imagine Netflix worked this way.
You subscribe to a cheaper package.
Every week, Netflix chooses three films for you.
You cannot choose them yourself.
Or you can pay almost the full Netflix price to watch only one television series.
For a little more money, you get the entire platform.
Nobody would call that meaningful consumer choice.
Netflix's value proposition is simple:
You choose what you watch.
Football streaming has increasingly reversed that logic.
The technology is perfectly capable of delivering personalised content.
But the consumer is still asked to adapt to packages designed around the commercial interests of rights holders and broadcasters.
The fan wants Milan.
The market says:
Here are three games we selected.
Or:
Pay almost the full price for Milan alone.
Or:
Pay a little more and buy everything.
That is not genuine personalisation.
It is a pricing ladder.
Where is Brussels?
This is the question I would like the European Commission's competition authorities to consider.
The competition debate around football broadcasting has traditionally focused on the relationship between powerful companies:
- who wins the broadcasting rights;
- whether exclusivity restricts competitors;
- whether telecommunications companies can distribute competing services;
- whether commercial agreements reduce competition.
These questions are important.
Italian competition authorities have already intervened against aspects of the previous TIM–DAZN agreement, finding competition problems connected to restrictive clauses.
So concerns about competition in football broadcasting are hardly imaginary.
But perhaps Brussels is asking only half the question.
European competition policy asks:
Are the companies competing?
Consumers should also ask:
Am I actually able to choose?
Those are not the same thing.
A market can have several packages.
Several broadcasters.
Competitive auctions.
And still leave the individual consumer with virtually one economically rational choice.
The three-game illusion
This is why the argument about “three games available” deserves much closer scrutiny.
Three games are meaningful only if they are the games the consumer wants.
For a Milan supporter, three randomly selected Serie A matches are not necessarily a cheaper alternative to following Milan.
They are a different product.
And when the team-specific alternative costs almost as much as the complete package, the supposedly personalised choice loses much of its economic meaning.
The supporter is left with an uncomfortable reality:
Pay less and risk missing the team you support.
Or:
Pay almost the full price for one team.
Or:
Pay slightly more and buy everything.
That is technically choice.
But is it meaningful choice?
That is a question regulators should be asking.
Competition should mean more than counting packages
Europe has become increasingly concerned about digital gatekeepers, consumer lock-in and platforms that become unavoidable gateways between customers and the products they want.
Football broadcasting deserves the same intellectual attention.
Because a broadcaster does not need to control all football to become unavoidable for a particular supporter.
It only needs to control the football that supporter cares about.
For me, as a Milan fan, the relevant product is not 380 Serie A matches.
It is Milan.
And if every cheaper option either fails to guarantee Milan or costs almost as much as the Full Pass, then the number of packages available becomes largely irrelevant.
Three games are not freedom if you cannot choose them.
A team-specific pass is not a genuine alternative if it costs almost as much as everything.
And a market should not automatically be described as consumer-friendly simply because it offers several different buttons on a pricing page.
The real question for Brussels
The European Commission does not need to declare DAZN an illegal monopoly to examine this problem.
That is not the point.
The more interesting question is much simpler:
Can a market genuinely be considered competitive from the consumer's perspective when the cheaper options do not deliver the product the consumer actually wants, and the personalised option costs almost as much as the complete package?
For regulators, competition may be measured in broadcasters, rights auctions and packages.
For football supporters, it is measured differently.
Can I watch my team?
Can I choose the matches I pay for?
Can I buy only what I actually want without paying almost the same price as everything?
Until those questions have convincing answers, football fans should be careful when they hear the word choice.
Because sometimes three packages are not three choices.
Sometimes they are simply three different roads leading to the same expensive destination.
The Full Pass.
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