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Francois said it’s a “compelling proposition” for the likes of Netflix and Disney.
He added that this leaves uncertainty over the group’s future direction, “That’s the most important issue now – how can they grow? They have proved that they are resilient and they are profitable, but where could growth come from?”
American private equity companies are eyeing both clubs and François Godard, co-author of a ‘Private equity and football’ report for Enders Analysis this week, told The Times: “Very few clubs have the capacity to go and buy other clubs but these ones do and a private equity investor could have the impetus to do that and build a multi-club network.”
Magazine publishers are at different stages of a transformation cycle, but a variety of external and industry factors are massively accelerating change.
Often described as the transition from page to screen, in reality transformation is a deeper redefinition of each brand’s community and purpose, and the use-case benefits it delivers.
Online advertising is evolving into a space where trusted consumer media can exploit their advantages of community engagement and premium context, rather than indiscriminate traffic.
When it comes to rating the show’s success, Barb figures are pointless. “There are all sorts of metrics – reaching underserved demos, retaining uncertain subs a bit longer, getting some users to log on to their service instead of another – that feed into whether Netflix sees the show as a success,” explains Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis.
Netflix, he stresses, thinks globally. The Netflix audience is still dominated by the USA, where it has 67 million subscribers, followed by Brazil (15m), UK (14m), Germany (13m), France (10m) and Mexico (10m). “The Royal family is IP that travels well, along with the advantage from the thematic tie-in that they’ve done with the recent series of The Crown,” Harrington explains.
But when all is said and done — provided Qatar maintains a safe environment through to Sunday — “they have absolutely pulled it off,” says Claire Enders, founder of leading London-based media consultancy Enders Analysis.
“They have put Qatar on the map of the world and everyone in the world knows where they are and everybody has a more positive view of Qatar than they had before, for sure."
“They established beIN all over the Middle East and in France, and really built an incredible amount of Qatar brand recognition,” said Enders, pointing out that Qatar “certainly went at it ready to spend enormous sums,” given that over the years “the amount they’ve lost [on beIN] is in the many billions.”
CVC Capital Partners has acquired stakes in the top Spanish and French football leagues, and has been in talks with Germany’s and Italy’s alongside other private equity (PE) firms.
Clubs are after an immediate post-Covid capital injection, and the steady cashflows from media rights are attractive to PE firms. CVC has gained management influence, and tighter cost control should help channel the money into clubs’ stadiums and academies.
Even if the stakes were sold from a position of weakness, PE could help to align the traditionally fractious clubs with the leagues, bringing about a more robust approach across rights deals and investment in commercial potential.
As more viewing is delivered on-demand and online, the jeopardy and immediacy of sport make it one of the few genres which will remain overwhelmingly live.
Shared national experiences that allow as wide an audience as possible to follow simultaneously are increasingly rare in a fragmented media landscape, and public service broadcasters are still the only media capable of providing them.
The listed events regime should not just be protected but at least extended to include live digital rights: although the vast majority can presently access these events via DTT, changing viewing habits, eventual DTT switch-off and a shift in how rights are packaged means that action should be taken now to guarantee continual full, free availability.
The BBC announced that it should be active in planning for broadcast switch-off, but that the UK should be fully connected with universal affordable access to content.
World Radiocommunications Congress (WRC-23) takes place next year and the long-term future of DTT across EMEA will be debated. If WRC agrees coprimary access to existing DTT spectrum for mobile, this likely spells the end for DTT in the early 2030s.
By 2034, at the current migration rate, nearly 20 billion hours of TV will be viewed in DTT homes—just 20% less than today—with over 80% of that being to adults over 55.
Openreach has simultaneously announced that it is applying a full 11% inflationary price increase across all its key products, and effectively removing this price increase (and a bit more) for full fibre products through an update to its ‘Equinox’ special offer pricing.
Equinox 2's purpose is described as to encourage migration of existing connections to full fibre, but this is hard to see, and it looks more like a defence against migration to altnets and/or VMO2’s emerging wholesale proposition, albeit one that seems like it will not fall foul of regulatory rules.
Openreach will still benefit from the 11% price increase across most of its revenue base in 2022/23, and the shift to FTTP will remain accretive. Openreach’s customers will suffer from the price rise, but with a stronger outlook as they move to FTTP, while the altnet/VMO2 wholesale economics are as-you-were.