Bratislava, September 30, 2025 — The Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic (AMO) has expanded its ongoing abuse of dominance investigation to include two of the country’s leading commercial television broadcasters — TV Markíza and TV JOJ — concerning restrictions on the ability to rewind advertisements during playback of archived programs.
The authority originally launched the abuse investigation in April this year in connection with the licensing of TV archive media and other services. In late July, the AMO expanded its ongoing administrative proceedings against TV Markíza to include a new alleged anticompetitive practice involving limits on ad rewinding for on-demand or catch-up content.
A month later, in August, the authority initiated similar proceedings against TV JOJ, over the broadcaster’s behavior that may disadvantage both retransmission operators and viewers.
According to AMO’s preliminary findings, both broadcasters may have imposed unfair commercial terms on retransmission operators, requiring them to implement technical restrictions that prevent viewers from skipping or rewinding advertisements when watching programs from the stations’ archives. Operators reportedly complied with these contractual demands, which reduced viewing flexibility and affected user experience for some of the most-watched channels in Slovakia.
