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“It’s obviously bad because it throws into doubt the reliability of the organisation and the governance,” says François Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis.

“It has the immediate effect of forcing the company to scrutinise everything. You stop all your dealings, you stop all new contracts, you look at existing contracts and you have to run checks on all supply agreements.”

Godard adds: “Even if in a few months’ time we see that it was limited to one person and a few suppliers, in the meantime the whole business has been disrupted.”

Francois Godard of Enders Analysis underlined the importance for payment platforms to “ know their customers. It is necessary that this simple diktat be followed by payment companies, understood as credit card companies. They shift the responsibility to the banks that have direct contact with consumers and potential pirates. And yet -he highlighted- the same is not applied for example in the porn industry, where controls are carried out: there is a different awareness of illegal industries in some countries."

Douglas McCabe, media analyst at Enders, said the growth of social media as a dominant news source raised questions over trust and reliability of information.

“The hierarchy and curation of discoverable content are not designed by news and information media, but by different criteria,” he said. “This reduces the influence and impact of news brands that invest in expensive journalism, with obvious implications for the economics of media and democracy itself.”

Gareth Sutcliffe, analyst at Enders Analysis, said that such a deal would be “really clunky” for consumers but “might be a way around the CMA”. “Microsoft will be running the numbers for a UK carve-out that will please the CMA,” he said. “They would be looking at least-worst options.”

Author of the Enders research, Claire Holubowsky, told The Addition "Public expectations of and interest in women's coverage are growing faster than ever before, and the space is primed for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. Women's sport offers so much in terms of reach, advertising, and brand-building that there are myriad ways for news publishers to move and strategise - what matters is that they act (and soon!) to make the most of the opportunity provided by the Women's World Cup."