Turkish Competition Board imposes sector-wide separation remedies in the casting agencies sector

Kadir Baş

LBF Partners, Istanbul

k.bas@lbfpartners.com

Büşra Karabudak

LBF Partners, Istanbul

b.karabudak@lbfpartners.com

Introduction

In recent years, the Turkish Competition Board (TCB or 'Board') has turned the spotlight on the cinema and entertainment industry by investigating virtually all segments of the sector. In August 2025, the Board accepted a commitment package submitted by Mars, which was alleged to have abused its dominant position in the cinema exhibition services market by structuring its screening programme to the advantage of its own distribution arm.^[1] In the same month, the TCB closed its investigation into the long-term and mutually exclusive cooperation agreement between OGM, a film producer and Star TV, a national television broadcaster, on the basis of the behavioural commitments offered by the parties.^[2] In November 2025, the Board ended its investigation against production companies, Ay Yapim and Med Yapim, concerning the allegation that they entered into an agreement eliminating competition in their joint overseas distribution activities, based on the commitments submitted by the parties.^[3] More recently, the Board has accepted the commitments offered by Netflix and other subscription-based video-on-demand platforms, including Prime Video and Disney+, addressing, inter alia, exclusivity practices concerning content and talent.^[4]

In January 2025, the TCB also initiated an investigation against the Casting Agencies Association and casting agencies on the suspicion that they violated Article 4 of Act No 4054 on the Protection of Competition (APC), which generally mirrors Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and prohibits anti-competitive agreements. On 9 June 2026, the TCB announced its short-form decision, imposing a total administrative fine of TRY42,163,587 (approximately €781,500) for breaching Article 4 APC through the joint determination of agency commission rates and service conditions and the exchange of competitively sensitive information.^[5] The most notable aspect of the decision, however, is that the Board imposed a set of remedies, including, inter alia, a ban on the conduct of casting agency, casting direction and production activities within the same economic unit.

This article aims to examine the TCB’s decision in Casting Agencies and, in particular, to discuss critically the suitability of the remedies imposed by the Board.

Overview of the decision in Casting Agencies

The TCB opened an investigation against the casting agencies on two allegations: (1) the joint determination of agency commission rates, service conditions and the exchange of competitively sensitive information; and (2) conducting casting agency, casting direction and production activities together.

Regarding the first allegation, the TCB found that the investigated casting agencies violated Article 4 APC by jointly determining agency commission rates and service conditions and exchanging competitively sensitive information.^[6] The short form decision does not, however, identify any infringement in relation to the second allegation, namely the conduct of casting agency, casting direction and productions activities together. Despite this, the Board imposed a series of remedies requiring that such activities must not be carried out by the same undertaking.

Before turning to the remedies, it may be useful to describe ‘casting agency’ and ‘casting direction’ activities. A casting agency (or manager) manages the careers of the talents it represents and steers them towards suitable projects. A casting director, however, is engaged on a project-by-project basis to screen candidates in line with the director’s and producer’s requirements, present shortlists to decision-makers, coordinate auditions and oversee the selection process. Where a casting agency also acts as a casting director or offers production services, the TCB’s concern is that the agency may favour the actors it represents by excluding actors represented by competing agencies from productions and gaining access to competing agencies’ trade secrets.

Based on these grounds, and others presumably elaborated upon in the reasoned decision, the Board imposed the following remedies not only on the investigated undertakings but on all undertakings operating in the casting agencies sector:

• Casting direction and casting agency activities shall not be conducted under the umbrella of the same economic unity.
• Undertakings which conduct both casting direction and casting agency activities shall remove one of those activities from the company’s articles of association and effectively cease carrying it out.
• Production and casting agency activities shall not be conducted within the same economic unit; in addition, casting agencies/managers shall not carry out any other activity on behalf of the producer (such as consultancy, accounting, supervision or public relations) in productions in which they source talents.
• Undertakings which conduct both production and casting agency activities shall remove one of those activities from the company’s articles of association and effectively cease carrying it out.
• In negotiations between casting agencies/managers and producers regarding the engagement of a talent, the appearance of that talent in a production shall not be made conditional upon the engagement of other talents.

The TCB further imposed certain remedies on the Casting Agencies Association aimed at facilitating the implementation of the aforementioned remedies.

Assessment of the remedies

The remedies imposed by the TCB on casting agencies may be open to controversy on several grounds.

Imposition of remedies in the absence of an infringement finding

Although it is difficult to reach a definitive conclusion in the absence of the reasoned decision, the public announcement of the short-form decision indicates that conducting both casting agency and casting direction or production activities together was not found to constitute an infringement under Article 4 APC as such.

Article 9(1) APC, titled ‘Ending Infringement’, authorises the TCB to impose remedies to terminate an infringement where it determines that there is an infringement of Article 4, 6 or 7 APC. Therefore, if conducting both casting agency and casting direction or production activities together was not regarded as an infringement, one may challenge the imposition of remedies targeting that practice. That said, it is conceivable that the TCB considered the conduct of these activities together as a factor facilitating the exchange of competitively sensitive information between casting agencies, a practice that was found to constitute an infringement in the decision. If that is indeed the rationale underlying the Board’s approach, the remedies may be regarded as compatible with Article 9(1) APC.

In any event, it should be noted that the Board’s approach of imposing remedies in the absence of a finding of infringement is not unique to the decision in Casting Agencies. In its decision in Philips, the Board concluded that Philips did not abuse its dominant position yet nonetheless imposed a series of behavioural remedies on undertakings operating in the medical imaging and diagnostics market.^[7]

Imposition of structural remedies without prior recourse to behavioural remedies

According to Article 9(1) APC, the Board may only impose structural remedies where it has first imposed behavioural remedies which have proved ineffective. The remedies requiring the structural separation of casting agency, casting direction and production activities and the complete cessation of an activity should be regarded as structural in nature. From this perspective, it may be argued that before applying such structural remedies, the TCB should first have imposed behavioural remedies, such as requiring casting agencies that also act as casting directors or producers not to exclude competitors’ actors from productions.

It is also noteworthy that Article 9(1) APC requires the TCB to allow the undertakings concerned a period of six months to comply with structural remedies. The fact that in the decision in Casting Agencies, the Board granted only three months for compliance raises questions about the compatibility of this timeframe with that provision.

The imposition of remedies on non-investigated undertakings

The Board directed the structural separation remedies at all undertakings in the casting agencies sector, including those that were not party to the investigation. Whether the Board may impose such sector-wide obligations by way of a decision adopted in the context of an individual investigation is a matter of legal controversy. First, non-investigated undertakings have not been found to infringe Article 4 or 6 APC, which constitutes a precondition for the imposition of remedies under Article 9 APC. Second, the fact that such undertakings were not granted an opportunity to participate in the investigation proceedings or to exercise their defence rights may amount to a violation of the constitutional right to defence and the right to a fair hearing.

Nevertheless, this approach of the TCB is not without precedent. In its decision in White Meat III, the Board imposed fines on the investigated undertakings for infringing Article 4 APC, while also ordering behavioural remedies applicable to all undertakings operating in the white meat market.^[8] Similarly, the interim measures imposed by the Board in the ongoing investigation into the milk-for-feed practice constitute another example of remedies directed at all undertakings in the relevant sector.

The compatibility of such sector-wide remedies with Article 9 APC is open to question. In support of the Board’s position, it may be argued that imposing a ban solely on the investigated undertakings would be inequitable and could, in certain circumstances, violate the principle of equality before the law. Even if one accepts this argument, we believe that the TCB should adopt such measures through a general regulatory instrument rather than by way of an individual decision. The TCB is currently working on a communiqué specific to the cinema and entertainment sector to that end, which may serve to address competition concerns in the sector in a manner more compatible with the framework established by the APC.

Potential efficiencies of conducting the activities together

The suitability of the remedies imposed by the TCB may also be questioned from a substantive standpoint. While conducting casting agency and casting direction or production activities together may give rise to legitimate competitive concerns, such integration may equally generate efficiencies. Casting direction services require specialised know-how that is typically possessed by casting agencies. Requiring casting agencies to cease their casting direction activities may therefore diminish the quality of casting services and, consequently, the quality of productions. Furthermore, not all casting agencies and directors operate at the same scale. Small-scale agencies may find it difficult to sustain their operations without casting direction activities, and vice versa. This calls into question the appropriateness of a sector-wide ban that does not incorporate any threshold relating to market power or scale.

Conclusion

The remedies imposed by the TCB in its decision in Casting Agencies, requiring the separation of casting agency, casting direction and production activities, mark a notable intervention in the cinema and entertainment sector. The remedies are open to criticism on several grounds. First, the short-form decision does not appear to identify the joint conduct of casting agency and casting direction activities as an infringement in its own right, which raises questions as to the legal basis for imposing remedies targeting that practice under Article 9 APC. Second, the imposition of structural remedies without prior recourse to behavioural measures appears difficult to reconcile with the sequencing requirement set out in Article 9(1) APC. Third, extending the remedies to undertakings that were not parties to the investigation gives rise to serious concerns of compatibility with both Article 9 APC and fundamental procedural guarantees. Finally, the sector-wide ban without incorporating any scale threshold may fail to account for the efficiencies that the integration of casting agency and casting direction activities may generate.

The TCB is currently working on a cinema and entertainment sector-specific communiqué, which is expected to address, inter alia, the competitive concerns examined in the decision in Casting Agencies. In the authors' view, such a regulatory instrument would provide a more appropriate legal framework which may eliminate some of the concerns identified above.