Paramount has broken ranks with other Hollywood studios and agreed to ditch contentious contracts that restricted who could watch its movies on pay-TV in Europe.
Europe’s top regulator said Tuesday that Paramount will now allow customers across the European Union to access pay-TV content that had previously been restricted to the U.K. and Ireland.
Last year, the regulator accused Paramount and five competitors of illegally curbing European access to movies and TV shows through anti-competitive contracts with Britain’s Sky TV (SKYAY), part of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.
The other five studios the regulator fingered are: Disney (DIS), Comcast (CCV)-owned NBCUniversal, Sony (SNE), Twentieth Century Fox, also owned by 21st Century Fox (FOX), and Warner Bros. (Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner (TWX), which owns CNN.)
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