{"id":796192,"date":"2026-10-08T18:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T18:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796192\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T18:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T18:26:10","slug":"e-on-next-deal-to-buy-ovo-energy-leaves-uk-with-just-big-three-energy-suppliers-e-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/796192\/","title":{"rendered":"E.ON Next deal to buy Ovo Energy leaves UK with just \u2018big three\u2019 energy suppliers | E.ON"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost three-quarters of households in Great Britain are now served by just three energy suppliers, after E.ON<\/a> Next completed a deal to buy Ovo Energy despite fresh concerns about competition in the energy market.<\/p>\n

The takeover concluded on Thursday after Britain\u2019s competition watchdog cleared it, despite concerns that the shrinking number of household energy suppliers could mean bill payers will have less choice and suppliers will have less incentive to lower bills.<\/p>\n

While there will be no immediate change for the 4 million households supplied by Ovo, the sale means that E.ON Next, which already supplies 5.6 million households, will hold 25% of the household energy market \u2013 or 13.45m gas and electricity accounts \u2013 and become Great Britain\u2019s second-largest energy supplier.<\/p>\n

The supplier\u2019s hold on the market is narrowly behind Octopus Energy, which holds a 26% share or 14.3m accounts, and ahead of legacy energy incumbent British Gas, which was once the top supplier but today serves about 23% of the market or 12.5m accounts.<\/p>\n

It also deals a blow to the decade-long efforts to dismantle the dominance of what were the \u201cBig Six\u201d energy suppliers<\/a> to increase competition and lower energy prices.<\/p>\n

Tom Goswell, the energy supply lead at Cornwall Insight, a leading consultancy, said: \u201cThe big six have become the big three, and there have been questions raised over how this will impact household choice and the health of the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those concerns were rebuffed by Chris Norbury, chief executive of E.ON UK, who described the market as \u201cfiercely competitive\u201d and said the company\u2019s \u201cflexibility and scale\u201d would allow it to \u201cdeliver for customers now and to transform for the energy system to come\u201d.<\/p>\n

The legacy big six suppliers \u2013 British Gas, EDF Energy, E.ON UK, SSE, Scottish Power and npower \u2013 dominated about 85% of the energy market in 2016 when a landmark investigation by the CMA<\/a> warned that customers were overpaying by roughly \u00a31.4bn to \u00a31.7bn every year due to weak market competition.<\/p>\n

As a result of the E.ON deal, about 90% of Great Britain\u2019s household energy supply market will be held by only five suppliers when including EDF Energy and Scottish Power alongside the big three.<\/p>\n

Although there was a surge in new energy start-ups after 2016 \u2013 led by Octopus, Ovo and Bulb Energy \u2013 the market began to shrink after SSE sold its household supply business to Ovo in 2019<\/a>, and dozens of suppliers went bust<\/a> during the 2021\/22 energy crisis.<\/p>\n

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Octopus became the biggest supplier in the market after taking on 1.5 million customers from Bulb<\/a>, which became the biggest casualty when it went into administration in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarger suppliers do bring with them a degree of stability, and after about 30 firms dropped out of the market<\/a>, leaving customers wondering who would be sending their next bill, stability is not something to dismiss lightly,\u201d Goswell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concern with fewer suppliers is that the pressure to compete eases off, taking with it some of the incentive to keep prices low and offer something different. The big suppliers have the resources to give people real choice, and the test over the next few years will be whether households who shop around find a genuine range of deals waiting for them rather than three versions of the same thing,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost three-quarters of households in Great Britain are now served by just three energy suppliers, after E.ON Next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-796192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}