While it is not clear how the Telegraph deal was funded, the media analyst firm Enders said that the split with KKR had left it with “cash to burn”.

“The media business was valued at €3.5 billion, debt-free, and with reportedly single-digit billions in cash,” ­Enders added.

Döpfner took cues on publishing from his surrogate father, the late George Weidenfeld, whom he described as “the opposite of cancel culture”. On the pages of his new venture, it seems likely that he will embrace a range of voices. Abi Watson, an analyst at Enders, noted the “trophy asset multiple” paid by Axel Springer: 14.7x the Telegraph’s EBITDA in 2024 – almost exactly the same as the Nikkei multiple. “The price reflects the fact that RedBird IMI overpaid in the first place, setting a floor that subsequent bidders have had to match.”

Still, eyebrows were raised at the price tag. Abi Watson and Laura Darcey of Enders Analysis described £575 million as a “trophy-asset multiple” for The Telegraph, which reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £39 million last year. 

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, said that VMO2 had been gearing up for wholesale customers for some time but now “has an extra incentive to do so, as evidence that it is a credible wholesale network is likely to improve the chances of its takeover of Netomnia being approved”. 

The House of Mouse, it seems, has opted for the latter. According to a new Enders Analysis report, its decision to licence elements of its intellectual property (IP) to OpenAI' sora is not a ‘moonshot’ into the future of storytelling, so much as a pragmatic effort to “regain agency in a consumer ecosystem dominated by rampant unlicensed IP usage”.

Enders suggests the OpenAI agreement is therefore an act of containment – a way to channel activity that was effectively already happening into a framework with guardrails it could control.

“User-generated content, especially in video form, is in many ways a great thing for franchise owners,” said Gareth Sutcliffe, analyst at Enders Analysis.

“It signals what’s working and what isn’t with the IP rather than being perceived as direct competition. It allows for an expression of fandom to keep characters and stories alive between movie or TV series releases.”

"There's a lot of benefit ​to scale," said Claire Enders, founder and chief executive of Enders Analysis. "They are combining two very strong entities, that are well-placed in a number of different major European markets, including ‌the UK."

François Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis, has pointed out that the U.K. regulator recently blocked a deal for RedBird Capital Partners — backed by Abu Dhabi-based International Media Investments (IMI) to buy the Telegraph Media Group.

The pressures to do a deal are similar to those that prompted Netflix and Paramount to duke it out for WBD. Streaming, social media feeds and content providers like YouTube are all jostling for audience share. The result is that, in the UK, households have cut the time they spend watching public service broadcasters to 88 minutes a day, roughly half what it was a decade ago. And those aged 16-34 watch for just 21 minutes, according to Enders Analysis.

They weren’t alone – indeed Enders Analysis found that around half of media groups reported a decline in search traffic over the past year, thanks to AI Overviews impacting website visits.

The need to grasp this opportunity led the PPA to commission a major new report with Enders Analysis.

The purpose of the report was to move beyond anecdote and look “right back to the fundamentals” of people’s behaviour, what they do, what they trust, and what they value. The report found that 77% of users want to know if content has been created by AI, and that “authentic, personal, original” is the most valued attribute of human-generated content (81%).

The report also found that publishers should frame their strategy around four durable customer needs: trust, relevance, utility and community. Vitally, it also suggested that the winning strategies will be those that meet consumers where they are, with formats and services designed for how people actually behave now.

It is therefore a battle for hegemony that the Hollywood giants are waging. The objective: to reach critical mass and recoup the enormous investments in content demanded by the market. And the leader knows how to set the pace: for 2026 alone, Netflix will inject no less than $20 billion. So what can the competition do? "Consolidation is inevitable," replies François Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis.