Competition Appeal Tribunal Dismisses Spreadex Appeal in Sporting Index Case

The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has refused Spreadex Limited’s application to review a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decision that ordered the sale of Sporting Index after finding the acquisition substantially lessened competition.

The judgment, published on 19 March 2026, dismissed both grounds of review raised by Spreadex. The company had challenged the CMA’s choice of counterfactual in its September 2025 decision, which stemmed from Spreadex’s acquisition of Sporting Index in November 2023.

Grounds of review rejected

Ground 1 alleged the CMA failed to “stand back” and consider whether uncertainties in its reasoning meant the most likely counterfactual outcome was that an alternative purchaser (identified as AB1) would have continued Sporting Index’s operations. The Tribunal rejected this, stating the CMA’s approach reflected the standard judicial method for multi-factorial decisions, and requiring the CMA to assign weights to specific factors would wrongly treat the assessment as a mathematical exercise rather than a holistic one.

Ground 2 involved multiple sub-grounds and challenged the evidence base of the CMA’s chain of reasoning. It included specific rationality challenges to two conclusions (2A and 2B) and a broader rationality challenge to the overall conclusion that a sale to AB1 was the most likely counterfactual (2C). The Tribunal dismissed the specific allegations concerning the CMA’s evidence consideration under 2A and 2B, and concluded that the totality of the CMA’s analysis justified its ultimate counterfactual conclusion on rationality grounds under 2C.

The CAT’s decision upholds the CMA’s remedy requiring Spreadex to divest Sporting Index to address the substantial lessening of competition identified in the merger.