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Douglas McCabe, analyst at Enders, said newspaper stewardship “is not the same as widget factory management . . . For some proprietors, influence and relevance are important factors alongside commercial success.”

McCabe added that since 2018 the newspaper had “expressed quality digital publishing nous, with lower story volumes but impressive impact. Its digital subscription model, and product development, have been well executed.”

According to François Godard of the research company Enders Analysis, the landscape has changed quickly.

“Discovery already had sports in Europe and were seeing this as an opportunity to upgrade their business model,” he says. “If you have something high profile like Premier League and Champions League rights you can go direct to consumer [with Discovery+], which is where everyone wanted to go. Now companies like Disney are not only cutting costs on content but they are willing to consider licensing it too. Now you must look at [the content it will get from] BT Sport alone: does it make sense and how can it make a profit? It’s not that it’s impossible but it’s something that’s long term and it will depend a lot on relationships with third parties, like Sky, selling it to consumers for you.”

Possible buyers range from very wealthy individuals seeking a trophy asset to media businesses looking for something more strategic. “I wouldn’t rule anyone out,” Douglas McCabe, media analyst at Enders, said.

“Don’t expect Apple to sell millions of these – the manufacturing capacity isn’t there, for a start,” says Joseph Teasdale, of Enders Analysis.

“Success will be the early adopters finding new and useful ways to fit the device into their daily lives, and developers building a software ecosystem for it. Failure will be a few hundred thousand Vision Pros languishing in drawers, or being dragged out at parties as a novelty.”

He added “This is going to take a lot of time and money to get right, but the end vision is pretty compelling. Apple’s latest product gives us just a hint of something that could one day replace the other screens in our lives.”