Attorney General Rob Bonta joined 11 other states and the Federal Trade Commission in asking a federal court to stop PlayPower’s purchase of its rival Burke, arguing that schools and parks would pay more.
By Staff Reporter
California’s attorney general has joined a federal and multistate lawsuit seeking to stop a private equity-backed merger of two of the country’s largest makers of commercial playground equipment, arguing that the deal would raise prices for the school districts and park departments that buy most of it with public money.
The complaint, filed Monday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, asks a judge to permanently block PlayPower, the owner of the Miracle, Little Tikes Commercial and Playworld brands, from acquiring BCI Burke, a Wisconsin manufacturer that the plaintiffs describe as one of PlayPower’s closest competitors. The Federal Trade Commission brought the case with 12 states, including California, under Section 7 of the Clayton Act, the federal law that bars mergers that may substantially lessen competition.
“The illegal merger of PlayPower and Burke, two of the largest manufacturers of commercial outdoor playground equipment, threatens to lower quality and increase prices for California schools and local parks and recreation departments,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement issued from Oakland.
A deal with California owners on both sides
Although the playground companies are based elsewhere, the owners on both sides of the deal are Californian. According to the complaint, PlayPower, which is headquartered in Huntersville, N.C., is owned by Platinum Equity, a private equity firm based in Beverly Hills that acquired the company in October 2025. Burke, based in Fond du Lac, Wis., is majority-owned by funds managed by Bertram Capital, a private equity firm in Foster City, in San Mateo County, which bought Burke in 2021.
The complaint says Platinum Equity agreed on Feb. 8 to buy all of Burke’s voting securities from Bertram Capital. The purchase price is blacked out in the public version of the filing, as are many of the internal company documents the government quotes.
When PlayPower announced the agreement in February, its chief executive, Bryan Yeazel, called Burke “a highly complementary addition to PlayPower” that “meaningfully enhances our portfolio.” The companies said then that they expected the deal to close in the second quarter of 2026. As of early Tuesday, neither Platinum Equity nor PlayPower had posted a response to the lawsuit on its website.
What the government alleges
The plaintiffs argue that the market for commercial outdoor playground equipment is already highly concentrated after decades of acquisitions. Five companies, including PlayPower and Burke, own more than a dozen brands and hold 85 to 90 percent of U.S. sales, the complaint says. The others it names are PlayCore, Landscape Structures and Kompan.
Under the measure of concentration used by federal antitrust enforcers, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the complaint says the combination would cross two thresholds that make a merger presumptively illegal: the post-merger index would exceed 1,800 and rise by more than 100 points, and PlayPower’s share of the national market would exceed 30 percent.
The government’s case rests heavily on the companies’ own records. The complaint says Burke’s growth since 2016 has outpaced the market and come at PlayPower’s expense, and that PlayPower has launched initiatives and made exceptions to its usual policies to win business against Burke. It says that rather than continue that competition, PlayPower “decided to eliminate the pressure it faces from Burke by acquiring it.”
“Instead of investing in building better playgrounds or lowering prices, PlayPower and its parent Platinum Equity want to eliminate one of PlayPower’s fiercest competitors and continue to raise prices on American schools, parks departments, churches and municipalities,” Daniel Guarnera, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition, said in the agency’s announcement.
The plaintiffs also argue that the deal could cost the independent sales representatives who sell the equipment through lower commissions or worse terms, and that new competitors are unlikely to enter quickly enough to replace the lost rivalry.
These are allegations, and the companies will have an opportunity to contest them in court.
Why it matters for California budgets
The complaint frames the case as a matter of public spending. Parks, schools and churches often spend from $50,000 to more than $1 million on a single commercial playground, it says, and purchases by public schools and parks departments, the most common buyers, are “mostly funded by public monies, including monies collected from taxes and bonds.” If prices rise, the plaintiffs argue, local agencies would build fewer playgrounds, replace aging ones less often or have to raise more money.
A growing state role in merger review
The case is the latest in a series of antitrust actions that Mr. Bonta has tied to the state’s affordability crisis. His office’s announcement pointed to a recent settlement with Paramount in the Warner Bros.-Paramount litigation and a victory in the Nexstar-Tegna case.
California is also preparing to take a larger independent role in reviewing mergers. In February, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 25, by Senator Tom Umberg, Democrat of Santa Ana. Beginning with filings made on or after Jan. 1, 2027, companies that submit premerger notices to federal regulators will also have to send copies to the California attorney general if they have their principal place of business in the state or meet a California sales threshold, according to a KEYT News report posted by Mr. Umberg’s office. The law gives the attorney general that information up front, rather than requiring a subpoena, the report said.
The coalition in the playground case is bipartisan. Alongside Democratic attorneys general in states like California, Illinois and Washington, it includes the Republican attorneys general of Texas, Tennessee and Ohio. The F.T.C. voted 2 to 0 to authorize the suit.
What comes next
According to the complaint, the companies have agreed to a temporary restraining order to preserve the status quo while the court considers the case. The plaintiffs are asking the court to enter that order, declare that the merger violates federal antitrust law and permanently bar the companies from combining.
