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Francois said he perceived TF1 and M6’s statements to be a “bargaining strategy” to apply pressure on the French Competition Authorities and have them greenlight the merger without too many conditions.

“M6 and TF1 have been arguing from the start that this merger was crucial to create a major French media group and face off the competition from global platforms, so here they’re alerting the market that if the regulators are setting the bar too high with conditions, they will not bend over."

Alice said "The hearings into the January 6th events are top of the media agenda in the US, and Trump is not emerging as unscathed by his behaviour. The soft base of Trump is peeling away. DeSantis is young and charismatic and likely to be a stronger contender for the next Presidential election, especially against Biden."

"Murdoch likes to back winners rather than losers, and Trump lost the last election - that's plain as day - and Ron DeSantis is more likely to win on 5 November 2024 and deliver the Republican agenda of low taxes."

She added "Fox had a brilliant time in terms of ad revenues when Trump was all in to the Murdochs, always dialling in and on tap to provide commentary. Now that he is not, because of the 'treachery' of Fox News over the election, they would certainly like to curry favour with DeSantis to replace Trump's pulling power."

Francois said “If Apple comes to Europe and starts buying rights, like Amazon, at some point prices may start rising again. I don’t know if there will be room left for someone like DAZN."

Francois is “sceptical” about DAZN’s ambitions in these areas. “Betting has far less barriers to entry than sports video,” he said. “Once you have the broadcast rights, nobody can launch against you. In betting, it’s much more fluid, it’s much more competitive and almost anybody can create something.”

Canal+, however, would have enough leverage to strike an exclusive distribution deal with this new HBO-Discovery+ service to aggregate it as part of its cable bundle in a pact similar to the one it signed with Disney + in France, according to Francois Godard at Enders Analysis. Godard also predicts such deal would have strong chances of being approved by the anti-trust board.

In 2011, the anti-trust board blocked Canal+ Group’s attempt to merge with OCS and launch a premium pay TV channel, but Godard says “the world has changed and Canal+ is no longer dominating the French market.” “Watchdog authorities are aware that Canal+ must consolidate to face off global streamers like Disney which are spend €30 billion in content this year,” Godard continued. “Canal+’s strategy today is to increase their scale, they’re on a world market and they need to ramp up their worth and subscriber base to finance bigger productions,” the analyst continued.