CRA Competition supported Microsoft and Activision Blizzard through the European competition review process of their $69 billion acquisition.
On 13 October 2023, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it would clear Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, subject to final undertakings. The announcement came twenty months after the deal was publicly announced and followed the notification of a new deal that would address the CMA’s previously expressed concerns relating to the distribution of Activision Blizzard games via cloud streaming services. During the course of the investigation, the CMA analyzed the horizontal overlap between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard in video game publishing, as well as the vertical relationship between Activision Blizzard’s publishing activity and Microsoft’s role as a distributor of video games on PC, console, mobile, and cloud platforms. The CMA concluded the merger was unlikely to lead to a significant lessening of competition in the UK following Microsoft’s sale of Activision cloud streaming rights to another publisher of video game: Ubisoft. The CMA press release can be found here.
The deal was previously cleared by the European Commission. Approval of the deal was conditional on Microsoft’s commitment to distribute Activision Blizzard games to cloud streaming services in the EEA. The Commission’s press release can be found here.
The CMA’s announcement also followed clearance of the acquisition by multiple global agencies, including the State Administration for Market Regulation (China), the Korea Fair Trade Commission, the Japan Fair Trade Commission, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Brazil), the South African Competition Commission, the Fiscalía Nacional Económica (Chile), the New Zealand Commerce Commission and others.
A CRA team, including Dr. Matteo Foschi, Elina Koustoumpardi, Liam Connolly, Balázs Csullag and Jakub Drabik, advised the Parties across jurisdictions worldwide.
