Challenges to Anti-Monopoly Regulation of Russian Media Market

Abstract

Under the increasing digitalization of media industry, a new economic phenomenon has emerged in the Russian Federation: the so-called digital monopolies. Diversified online companies are developing rapidly and extend the influence of their ecosystems to the whole national media market. The key economic resource of media business, advertising revenues, is distributed increasingly unevenly. An explosive growth of new leaders has already resulted in an unprecedented economic concentration and opened up opportunities for the largest players to abuse their dominant position, which definitely threatens all the other players in the industry. In this context, the issue of legal restrictions on monopolism and protection of free competition in the country's media market has become particularly relevant. The paper examines all the regulatory legal acts in force representing both sector-specific and general anti-monopoly legislation in Russia. It also studied a number of current economic indicators of the whole industry and the most significant media enterprises. We identified some key shortcomings and ambiguous legal provisions hampering the work of the state regulatory body. The author concluded that at the moment the Russian legal field is far from being adjusted to regulating monopolization in the media market. The formal attribution of players to the industry or its segment, the evaluation of their combined market share and the composition of commodity services they offer is a big challenge nowadays. To be able to exercise adequate control over the largest Russian media companies, one has to elaborate totally new approaches and norms taking into account specific characteristics of this industry as an object of regulation.