ENTERTAINMENT ANTITRUST EXPERT WITNESS TESTIMONY AND CONSULTANT

There’s a lot on entertainment antitrust expert witness practitioners’ plate as of late, given that a field often seen as spanning movies, television, music, sports, gaming and more faces rising antitrust scrutiny in recent years. Just a few things on entertainment antitrust expert witness consultants’ docket are everything from traditional media consolidation and vertical integration issues to emerging concerns around data-driven streaming wars. Opinions are becoming plentiful as are new avenues of research.

1. Rethinking the shape of entertainment content – Considering things like potential content substitutability across different entertainment mediums, windowing strategies, and whether consumer perspectives differ for specific genres or sub-markets to get at a proper, objective market definition.
2. Vertical integration between content and distribution – As major conglomerates have tightened control over both content production and distribution pipelines, top entertainment antitrust expert witness leaders model potential anti-competitive foreclosure incentives and impacts on independent programmers’ access to audiences.
3. Program access rules and bundling requirements – There are claims that vertically integrated firms leverage control over must-have programming to impede rivals’ ability to offer comparable bundles or packages by denying content licensing or imposing restrictive contractual conditions.
4. Talent/resource consolidation and monopsony power – Pros assess whether highly consolidated content producers wield monopsony buying power over talent and resources like actors, writers, and production crews in ways that thwart rivals’ ability to develop compelling entertainment products.
5. Distribution technology tying and exclusivity – Allegations frequently arise around whether streaming or physical distribution platforms, devices, and proprietary technologies suppress consumer choice through tying arrangements or exclusionary deal requirements creating interoperability barriers. Enter an entertainment antitrust expert witness for opinions.
6. Data collection and audience foreclosure concerns – The rise of streaming and digital viewership measurement capabilities have sparked debates around whether unfettered data collection bestows durable competitive advantages that foreclose future entrants’ ability to attract audiences.
7. Sports media rights and territorial restrictions – For live sports programming, a multitude of entertainment antitrust expert witnesses examine the competitive effects of league broadcasting policies, blackout rules, exclusive territorial restrictions and whether any practices artificially raise consumer pricing or diminish output competition between broadcasters.

As rapid technological shifts like streaming video, TV, films, etc. restructure business models, entertainment antitrust expert witness consultants consider how emergent practices may enhance incumbents’ market power, stifle innovation by would-be disruptors, or skew the competitive playing field for talent, advertisers, and media distribution.