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“Netflix has very little original home and garden programming and very little successful programming that it classifies as relaxing,” said Tom Harrington, the head of television at the research firm Enders Analysis. “But there’s a lot of ‘feelgood’ programming, mostly romantic, coming-of-age, Hallmark-esque movies, and it makes sense for Netflix to try to extend that mood into other genres.”

Enders Analysis CEO Douglas McCabe said it best: “...journalism provides material brand leverage, not its opposite. The whole system should be turned on its head, and quantify the benefits of context for pricing power and consumer propensity.”

France’s Ligue 1 launched a D2C platform in the UK last year after failing to sell the rights – “a sign of weakness”, according to media commentator Claire Enders of Enders Analysis.

“Fairy godmothers don’t always show up. The tech companies have not shown up and it’s for a very good reason. The models are very difficult and painful and it takes years to build them up,” said Enders. 

Claire Enders, the co-founder of Enders Analysis, a leading British research firm, was even more apocalyptic in her assessment of the piracy epidemic.

“We’ve had covid and a cost of living crisis in almost every market and that has led to incredible spikes in piracy,” she said. “It’s the number one problem in sport. It’s worth about 50 per cent of most markets and in India it’s more like 90 per cent.”

Enders believes that one of the reasons the Premier League’s media rights continue to grow in value is that the league, in partnership with its broadcast partners, police and Britain’s leading internet service providers, has been much tougher on piracy than its counterparts elsewhere.

She was particularly scathing about French football’s decision to ditch its long-term broadcast partner Canal+ in 2020 and described Italy’s efforts to fight piracy as “slack”.

Claire Enders, who has studied the Murdoch empire for 40 years, is among many analysts who see little logic in the recent developments. “As a business analyst, I don’t see what the purpose was. I don’t see what they’re in such great disagreement about, since they’ve all contributed hugely to the value created since the nadir of the company only 13 years ago.”

Enders said: “You wouldn’t even be able to put a valuation on those companies [the UK newspapers] because of the rules in place on foreign ownership.” While the radio assets are admired, the company moved its upstart news channel TalkTV because of losses.