The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block Platinum Equity and its portfolio company PlayPower from acquiring BCI Burke, arguing that combining two of the largest makers of commercial outdoor playground equipment would raise prices and reduce innovation for schools, churches and parks departments.
The complaint was filed on 19 October 2026 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, case number 3:26-cv-12072. The Commission voted 2-0 to authorise staff to seek a permanent injunction. Attorneys general from twelve states joined as plaintiffs: Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The transaction arises from a merger agreement signed on 8 February under which Platinum Equity agreed to buy all of Burke's voting securities from Bertram Capital. The complaint names the Platinum Equity and Bertram Capital fund and advisory entities as defendants alongside the operating companies.
PlayPower already owns Miracle Recreation Equipment Company, Little Tikes Commercial and Playworld Systems. The FTC's alleged market is the manufacture of commercial outdoor playground equipment in the United States, where it says five companies hold 85 to 90 per cent of sales between them: PlayPower, PlayCore, BCI Burke, Landscape Structures and KOMPAN.
The specific market shares and concentration figures are redacted in the public complaint. What the public version does state is that the deal crosses the structural presumption thresholds, with a post merger Herfindahl-Hirschman Index above 1,800 and an increase of more than 100 points, and a PlayPower share above 30 per cent after the transaction. The purchase price is also redacted, so there is no public deal value.
The FTC says PlayPower's prices have soared in recent years even as Burke competed aggressively and took share from it, and that the deal would also harm the independent sales representatives who sell both companies' equipment, through lower commissions or worse terms.
Daniel Guarnera, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition, said in a statement that playgrounds are an indispensable part of daily life for millions of American children and their families. He added that state and local governments spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year on playgrounds, and said that rather than investing in better playgrounds or lower prices, PlayPower and Platinum Equity want to eliminate one of PlayPower's fiercest competitors.
Two things make this case worth watching beyond its sector. The first is that the Commission has again reached past the operating companies to name private equity fund and advisor entities as defendants in their own right, the structural approach it first used against Welsh Carson in its anesthesia practice case. That choice signals the agency is still treating sponsor level roll up strategy, rather than any single acquisition, as the thing to be enjoined.
The second is that the FTC's recent merger litigation record gives the defendants something to point at. In its challenge to GTCR's 627 million dollar acquisition of Surmodics, a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois denied the Commission's preliminary injunction in November 2025 after an eight day bench trial, the agency declined to seek an injunction pending appeal, and the parties closed.
The politics here are unusually unhelpful for the buyers, though. The customers are schools, municipalities, churches and parks departments spending public money, which is both why twelve state attorneys general signed on and why the Bureau of Competition built its public statement around taxpayer dollars rather than around market structure.
