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Francois said “Every time Amazon increases its presence in a related field, it sends back the image of a machine that needs to be stopped, but it’s more of a political issue than a competition one."
He added “It is difficult to say that the development of Amazon Prime Video with sports and TV shows is anti-competitive in itself."
Mobile growth dipped again to -3.3% for what we hope is the final time as widespread lockdowns impacted paid-for usage in most countries.
BT and Vodafone joined the other European MNOs in guiding to improving trends in 2021—expecting EBITDA momentum to be 7-10ppts better—slightly ahead of the 5-7ppts for the European operators.
We may even see positive revenue growth next quarter thanks to the simple annualisation of the first lockdown, with the UK the most to gain and Germany and Italy the least. Investment is creeping up too with higher capex guidance and better 5G momentum.
James said Vodafone was “taking quite a conservative approach” by choosing Samsung and NEC, “who are significant players globally but have struggled in Europe, as opposed to newer specialists such as Airspan."
Drahi’s intervention illustrates the issues at BT. The company was traditionally what James Barford, telecoms expert at the media analyst Enders, described as a “steady-as-you-go yield stock."
James said “With the pension fund, the legal documents, the contracts and due diligence you are talking a long period of time.”
James said “It's possible they looked at the UK and at other altnet investments, and came to the conclusion that BT was the one that was going to win.”
In a new chapter of a three year saga, the Ligue 1 awarded eight weekly games to Amazon for the 2021-24 seasons at a rock bottom price of €250 million per year, while Canal+ is left paying €330 million for only two fixtures per week.
Amazon makes a qualitative leap to become the lead broadcaster of a top domestic sport for the first time, probably reflecting more opportunism than a strategic shift.
Canal+ is asking courts to cancel the auction. Based on precedents, we expect the shift to undermine the total market for sport subscriptions.
Tom said “Opening back up won’t affect the big streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Disney Plus anywhere near as much as smaller services that command lower engagement levels."
“Churn for Netflix will likely be returning to pre-Covid levels but it will still be lower than everyone else, except Amazon, which of course is pretty insulated from any of this due to free shipping. It will be somewhat harder for the likes of Starzplay, Britbox, Discovery+ and HayU to get new subscribers, but they are all still benefiting now from subscribers that wouldn’t have come on board in 2020 but for Covid."
Jamie said “Is there a gap in the market? Yes, a small one. No one has played with impartiality guidelines in TV news before. But in pure commercial terms it’s very tricky. If it hits its very ambitious targets, it will only just make a profit.”