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Julian said We don't really think it's a sound strategy to pursue. It's mainly because of the enormous amounts of money that the clubs already get from broadcast partners — logistically, it would be a lot more difficult, because every club would need to have their own streaming service. Live television is an expensive business."
Europe’s larger MNOs are falling over each other to demonstrate support for OpenRAN, which has become a primarily operator-driven standards initiative, with governments also firmly behind it.
This is driven by a desire to improve equipment interoperability from the current de facto monolithic standards, improve supplier diversity, and ultimately drive down cost.
While some movement towards interoperability is perhaps overdue, OpenRAN is not a panacea, and some trade-offs between price, performance, supplier diversity and reliability have to be accepted.
Mobile revenue growth improved slightly to -3% this quarter, primarily thanks to a weakening in the drag from the loss of roaming.
European MNOs are guiding to improving trends in 2021—broadly stable revenues and EBITDA vs declines of 5-7% in 2020. This bodes well for guidance from the UK players around mid-May.
However, the outlook is far from rosy, with Q1 2021 still very challenging ahead of an annualisation of the pandemic drags from the June quarter. Growth prospects remain contingent on the resumption of travel and the economic climate.
Francois said he could not see the clubs being expelled from domestic leagues because it would “hurt everybody” involved.
He added “We are in a hypothetical scenario of these clubs being expelled – I can’t see this happening because it will hurt everybody. But if this were to happen of course the broadcasters would come and say ‘we will pay less, you changed the product so we want to review the price."
“I don’t see how this new league would increase the pot, so at best you would capture money that’s going to the Champions League and possibly there would be a transfer of spending by broadcasters from a national leagues to this new league.”
Francois said Several of the Super League’s founders have American owners, who look at the European system and say, “Why this insecurity? In America we don’t have that."
Francois said “This project just does not work without France and Germany. How can you sell it as a European league when you’re just talking about Milan, Madrid and London?”
Debt-ridden ‘insurgent’ clubs seek salvation in golden combination of control of the competition, end of relegation and new financing sources.
The Super League amounts to a hostile takeover bid for the Champions League.
The project’s impact on the value of broadcasting rights could be somewhere between neutral and negative. The Premier League and Ligue 1 auctions could hardly be held under the current uncertain climate.
James said £180m a year would be saved by shifting Virgin Mobile’s network to O2, despite a recent deal for Vodafone to underpin the service. He believes about £100m in tax benefits are there for the taking by “netting O2’s profits against accumulated losses at Virgin Media."
He added “Switching [Virgin Mobile’s network] and backhaul supply is complicated but routine work for a telco. Merging customer service and sales is complicated and a big job, but the extent to which they will merge these is unclear. They can keep them fairly separate indefinitely.”
Francois said “What the breakaway clubs really want is to take control of the Champions League. It is a very aggressive attempt to get Uefa to sign up to a revamp of the Champions League that gives them more power and commercial returns. The two events can’t co-exist. If the Super League were to launch, the Champions League will just collapse.”
He added “I do not think a European Super League will have much impact on the configuration of the UK broadcasting market, Sky would, of course, have a look, but they have taken a step back and are increasingly focusing on being an aggregator of content, so I don’t see a bidding war for exclusivity. There is no sign of a new entrant and Amazon show no sign of buying more than just limited amounts of sports rights. I would expect the US owners of some of these clubs would like to replicate some of the US sports rights market and try to seek more than one broadcast partner.”