What the heck is 'competition', Competition Commission ?

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31 August

If you've never heard of the MMC*, you might wonder what the Competition Commission does ?

Do they police the occasions when you came up for a brilliant new name for Frosties, but didn't win, or that holiday in Honolulu that they keep ringing me about ?

Well, this probably won't help : Imagine a town, Townchester, with a big branch of Tesco a few streets away from one side of the river, and an equally big branch of Asda in the same position on the other side. Imagine Asda decided that they thought that people were more interested in carpet, and devoted half of their floor-space to that instead of their normal range of goods.

So what has happened to competition in Townchester ? Asda, for whatever business or other reason, has effectively given Tesco a massive advantage, and could make its so very low prices creep up, because it knows that customers can less easily find all that they need at Asda.

But does the Competition Commission have anything to say about this ? I understand not, and it would take Asda to decide to sell up to Tesco altogether before, as I gather, The Office of Fair Trading might refer the matter to the Commission.

Does this make any sense ? In both cases, a market position lessens competition, but, unless I am quite wrong, the Commission won't oblige Asda to compete fully with Tesco, any more than it will, if Asda does as I say with 70% of its floor area, encourage Lidl or who knows what other supermarket retailer in to keep Tesco in check.

And does it nap ? A very big Sainsbury's has now opened in Bicester, but I am reliably informed (by a friend who lives there) that the competitive playing-field before then saw no fewer than seven, yes seven, Tesco branches in this one town.

Anyway, apply this 'thinking' to the business of cinemas, of projecting films for public exhibition, and Festival Central is threatened because Cineworld, which had a cinema already, now owns both : the Commission, from the lofty height of its great wisdom, records that there are membership schemes and a diversity between the type of films shown at each.

It records that state of affairs, but decides, I am told (by @MovieEvangelist), to take no account of it, irrespective of the fact that one largely could not see almost all of the films shown at Festival Central at Cineworld. It focuses (again, @MovieEvangelist informs me) on odd assumptions about what people would do if prices rose 5%, but has no wit to think that, if the cost of seeing films did increase that much, one would not, as it surmises, go to another cinema where one could not see the films that one chooses to view, but just not watch quite so many films - if the price of beer goes up, do I just consume as much, if my income has not kept pace, or have slightly fewer pints ?

It's obvious, but seemingly not to the Competition Commission. And membership : one pays a fee for membership at Festival Central, but then gets three free tickets, 10% of food and drink, and up to £2.00 off the price of almost all other tickets, all applicable across Picturehouse cinemas. One can just discount that, when Cambridge Vue, I gather, does not have such a scheme ? Cineworld has an unlimited subscription (@MovieEvangelist says), allowing the holder to see any number of films for a monthly payment - can that, too, just be ignored, if one wants to talk about ticket-prices ?

Whose interests, then, is the Commission protecting ? The one-off visitor to Cambridge who wants to see a film ? If the visitor likes world or independent cinema, and is a member at The Belmont, in Aberdeen, he or she can use those free tickets, or get something up to £2.00 off, plus the 10% discount, so why compare the straight price of, say, a matinee ticket at the Vue with that ?

Regarding supermarkets without their loyalty cards, discount vouchers, and three-for-two offers - would looking at the ordinary prices, without being able to cash in points on meals, holidays, probably cinema tickets, make sense ?

In the Commission's world, there is the possibility of the lessening of its arcane notion of competition, and it seems not to care that the consequence of believing that action probably must be taken, i.e. requiring Cineworld to sell one of the Cambridge cinemas, runs the risk of three cinemas showing pretty much the same films**.

If that is the desired outcome, then it is the desert that we have of multi-channel t.v., with no variety within the large number of channels, save that each one is a different channel, in terms of the quality and worth of content. Making big players bid to screen prestigious sporting fixtures just meant that the winners passed on the cost of their winning bid to the public - pay £Z to subscribe, or you don't see these events.

The public had these events more easily and less inexpensively available before. They have just had them sold back at the high price of subscribing, say, to Mr Murdoch's services.

Only beneficiaries ? : Mr Murdoch, the shareholders of his companies, the staff who encrypt and broadcast the events, allow the subscriber, both physically and by checking that he or she continues to pay, to watch, and the manufacturers of the technology that the subscriber needs, and their staff and shareholders.


What price a film festival ? Oh, a fanciful notion of competition has to be explored to protect the public from seeing the latest Woody Allen, world premieres, twenty documentaries (when Cambridge is not even primarily a documentary film festival)...

Thanks, and make me have to spend at least £13 on a Travelcard to London and then to have to pay the high admission fees of London Film Festival's screenings !


End-notes

* The Monopolies and Mergers Commission, replaced by the CC on 1 April 1999 (from memory).

** Of course, that is pure competition, rather than having this arthouse muck screened ! (Almost in the same way that Nineteen Eighty-Four has three massive powers vying for it.)


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)