The Assessment of Exclusive Contracts: The Competition Case Against Computicket in South Africa

This article reviews an abuse of dominance decision against the main outsourced ticketing firm in South Africa. The decision of the Competition Tribunal in January 2019 was upheld by the Competition Appeal Court in October 2019. The case clearly illustrates an economics approach to evaluating exclusionary conduct. As this article sets out, the market and contractual environment in which Computicket operated corresponded closely to the assumptions of the economic theory of anti-competitive exclusive dealing. These conditions, taken together, imply that Computicket’s exclusive contracts are likely to have led to significant anti-competitive effects in the relevant market.