Related markets: the doctrine competition enforcement needed
The Supreme Court corrects the National Court in the SGAE case and recalls that dominance can be projected onto a closely linked market.
The Supreme Court judgment sending the SGAE case back to the National Court deserves a reading beyond the 2.95 million euros at stake. What the High Court has done, by correcting the wholesale annulment of the CNMC fine, is to reaffirm an essential tool of competition enforcement: the doctrine of related markets.
The reasoning is of overwhelming logic. If a company holds a dominant position in one market and uses that power to restrict competition in another closely linked market, demanding proof of dominance in the second market as well would empty the prohibition of content. Abuse, by definition, consists of exploiting power where you have it to gain advantages where you do not. The National Court had read the case backwards: because SGAE lost share in the audiovisual market in 2018, the whole sanction fell. The Supreme Court recalls that the markets to which the abuse is attributed are closely linked and that it cannot be ruled out that the position in one affects the other.
It is worth, however, not overdimensioning the judgment. The Supreme Court has not created a new category nor altered the elements of abuse of a dominant position: dominance, conduct and restrictive effects must still be proven. What it has done is clear away a defensive argument that threatened to turn narrow market definition into an automatic safe conduct. From now on, allegations about affected markets will have to be measured more carefully, both before the National Markets and Competition Commission and before the courts that review its resolutions.
The case also serves to recall the difference between article 1 and article 2 of the Competition Act. The former prohibits collusive conduct, agreements between operators that restrict competition; the latter, the abusive exploitation of a dominant position, which a single company can commit. In the SGAE case there was no agreement to pursue, but the exploitation of a position of strength, and that procedural distinction explains why the discussion about the affected market was so decisive: without an affected market onto which to project the abuse, article 2 was left without a playing field.
The opinions in this section are editorial.
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Fuentes
- elconfidencial.com. Accessed 2 November 2026.
The specific data in this article come from the official sources cited.
