Claro Brasil, the largest pay TV operator in the region, criticized The Walt Disney Company’s decision to have removed content from its linear channels to strengthen the exclusivity of the offer of its Disney + and Star + OTTs. “This measure makes the service more expensive for the subscriber and makes everything more expensive“, the company declared to the Administrative Council for Economic Defense, during the process of the merger between Discovery and WarnerMedia.

Originally, the operator had been consulted solely for its opinion on the inter-brand business, with no expectation that it would actually be involved in the decision. However, Claro said that both the Discovery and Warner signals represent an important part of its pay TV offering, and that if their content were transferred, the service would suffer.

To exemplify the possible scenario, the company mentioned the case of Disney, which deleted content such as the last seasons of The Walking Dead and This is Us, two of the most popular shows offered by the Star Channel, from the linear signal, to offer them only on their streaming platforms. In addition, it mentioned the loss of the most important matches in the European football league, such as the classic between Manchester United and Liverpool. As Claro explained, if Warner and Discovery repeat Disney’s strategy, the public would pay a higher value to access the content they previously consumed at a lower price.