Competitive Harm and Welfare Impact of Exclusive Licensing of Sports Event Copyrights

As the first anti-monopoly case in the field of domestic sports events, the dispute between Osports Culture Media Co., Ltd. and Zhongchao Co., Ltd. and its exclusive partner Shanghai Yingmai Co., Ltd. for "signing vertical monopoly agreement and abusing market dominance" has triggered extensive academic discussion recently. The Supreme Court held that the defendants "have dominant market position in the Chinese Mainland Super League picture market", so the core of debates lies in "whether the exclusive authorization is harm to competition". Then, the Supreme Court has conducted a legal, rational, and competitive analysis of the granting of operating rights and concluded that the case does not violate antitrust laws. However, through our study, it is found that the non-exclusive licensing is always higher than the exclusive licensing whatever the competitive status is, therefore the latter has the competitive harm effect and thus violates the rationality stated by the Supreme Court. Hence, the following conclusions are made that: ① From the economic point of view, though the exclusive licensing of image copyright in Chinese Super League and the competitive process of the licensing does not violate the anti-monopoly law, it actually harms consumers and social welfare; ② From the legal perspective, the Supreme Court may ignore its effect on excluding and restricting competition in the justification of exclusive licensing, which should be supplemented based on the principle of prudence.