Sports broadcasters fined £4m for colluding over freelance pay rates

Four of the UK’s largest sports broadcasting and production companies have been fined more than £ 4m for illegally confrontation at illegally freelance pay rates.

The UK competition regulator said that BBC, BT, IMG and ITV would have to pay a joint £ 4.24M after shared information about fees for freelance workers including camera operators and sound technicians.

Sky also broke the law, but before the investigation began, the competition and the markets Authority (CMA) were avoided by the fine after warning for their participation.

Freelancers are used by all five firms to make sports materials and work on live matches and events.

The CMA said that it found 15 examples of two companies, who illegally share information about salary – such as day rates and growth – to coordinate how much coordination is done to pay to freelancers.

Investigation stated that one of the companies told the other that they wanted to “align and benchmarks” but “had no intention of joining the dialect war”, the investigation has said in the investigation.

For competition enforcement, the Executive Director of the regulator, Juliet Esar noted how “millions of people watch the game each day, are working on the curtain to make it possible with the production teams to make it possible” and this “is only correct that they are paid properly”.

“Companies must determine the rates independently of each other, so salary is competitive – not doing so can leave the workers out of the pocket,” he said.

“Employers must ensure that employees know the rules hired and stick to them to prevent this from happening in future.”

BT and IMG were fined £ 1.7m each, while the BBC would have to pay £ 424,000 and ITV received a fine of £ 340,000.

All four broadcasters told BBC News that they “fully collaborated” with investigation.

A BBC spokesperson said that it “takes its competition law seriously”.

He said, “The BBC was included in three of the 15 violations identified by the CMA and accepted the liability for these as soon as possible,” he said.

“We give immense importance to the freelancers with whom we work, both sports and BBCs, and we will continue to work hard to invest and develop with the Freelance community, to develop talent.”

A spokesperson of the Bt group also stated that the firm “seriously”, “accepted the findings of the investigation”, and “agreed to settle the matter”.

“We are committed to ensure that our obligations are inherent in all levels of our business and have taken several steps to strengthen our competition and compliance initiative.”

An ITV statement said: “ITV is fully committed to compliance with the competition law and has collaborated with the CMA during its investigation.

“In the light of the CMA’s investigation, we have implemented competition law compliance measures in the entire business.”

The IMG said in a statement that the case has “resolved now” and it has taken all necessary steps to address any prior compliance issues “.

On Friday, the CMA also discontinued a similar investigation in non-sports TV products with BBC, ITV, Hartswood Films, Hat Trick Productions, Red Planet Pictures, Sister Pictures and Tiger Aspects Productions.

The regulator said that it had not reached the decision whether they were engaged in anti-competitive practices.