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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.
The cultural and social relevance of European broadcasting is in danger of being diluted.
Increasing pressure over the commercial free-to-air model threatens high-reach news delivery.
In-market mergers among European broadcasters may be necessary to reach the critical size to sustain high-quality, content-driven platforms.
Tom Harrington at Enders Analysis says: “Whatever they say, when Fox combined with Disney, they made fewer films. When people merge, they make less stuff. It's just how it works. So there’s fewer films costing more money meaning there’s not enough stuff in the cinema to attract a lot of people regularly. The cinema business model is not really selling cinema tickets as 60% of that money goes to the studio. It’s getting people in every night to sell popcorn and drinks. That model thrives on people going more rather than less.”
According to figures from Enders Analysis, the league brought in €2.1bn from such deals last season, compared with €1.4bn for the Spanish, German, Italian and French leagues combined.
Major labels have announced a slew of AI deals designed to shape nascent technology on their own terms, and so avoid repeating the mistakes of the early streaming era.
AI music startups will relaunch their services this year enforcing labels’ red lines on copyrighted music. The music industry’s material impact on AI products is in stark contrast to video and news industry engagement.
Google’s decade-long interest in AI music is moving into action with the launch of Lyria 3 and the acquisition of ProducerAI as a leading exponent of advanced, AI-enabled music creation—YouTube remains a sleeping giant.
Disney’s decision to license to OpenAI’s Sora is necessary to regain agency in a consumer ecosystem dominated by rampant unlicensed IP usage. The deal reflects an ongoing pattern of opportunistic, equity-driven deals by Disney in high-profile technology categories.
Movie and TV content owners’ ability to replicate similar deals to protect their IP assets is limited by vague engagement pathways and opaque or non-existent revenue sharing models combined with dealmaking constraints at AI operators, some of which are developed in China.
Even within the parameters of a deal, the ongoing risk of a public display of malfunctioning guardrails with licensed IP is real, as it is on non-licensed models. In-house AI expertise and stronger copyright compliance will require additional investment to ensure slippery usage is minimised.
VMO2 ended 2025 on a slowing note, with broadband still being hit by altnets and mobile impacted by negative publicity surrounding an October pricing change.
Guidance for 2026 at 3-5% declines for proforma service revenue and EBITDA looks bleak, driven by current momentum and various built-in technical factors, including wholesale payments to nexfibre.
We are not convinced that the agreed nexfibre /Netomnia deal is in any sense a panacea for VMO2’s issues, but there are other green shoots that could help the company back to growth beyond 2026.
“Trump is reshuffling the cards,” said François Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis, adding that “as long as tensions are not resolved, and there is uncertainty, they represent “a risk on investment and on long term decisions made by companies,” including those in the media and entertainment sphere.
“I think countries like Canada and the U.K. should be the most sensitive since there is a lot of production by American studios and for the American market taking place in both countries,” Godard noted.
“Then there are question marks regarding the European policy towards American tech exports [to Europe] and American tech giants, as a form of retaliation,” Godard went on to add. “The matter is certainly not settled.”
Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis, said that a restructuring by itself was unlikely to 'move the dial' until the results of any changes began to be reflected in the advertising giant's finances.