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Alice said “It is a minority making a reasonable amount of money – ones that can command large audiences – and then there’s a very long tail."

She added "It definitely takes a while to build up scale and an audience. I think it probably works better for established writers from media outlets who have already built up a following with the security of having a large organisation as well as the salary before they transition across. It would be much harder to build up organically – it's not impossible, but definitely challenging."

"The journalists that have done well through Substack are really columnists, political journalists and opinion writers. Maybe there's a bit of a risk there that for a news organisation they lose talent – somebody who potentially will be able to leverage higher fees as a result. But media organisations have always competed with one another to retain big names and grow associated audiences. I think it's just another competitor."

Francois said “Springer is as much in search of growing its individual business as it is in search of business models and understanding of the digital economy. They must hope they can draw knowledge from [Politico] that they can draw to other parts of their business group.”

Soccer fans will be converted into online shopping enthusiasts, as is the case with all things Amazon. Amazon demonstrated savvy in getting the rights on the cheap, according to Francois Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis, but it still needs to show it can exploit them to considerably expand its e-commerce business footprint.

Alice said “There is a lesson to be learned by Future’s success: there is still significant revenue to be driven by publishers."

“It is the death of the print magazine in that structurally there has been a consumption shift, but it is not the death of what a magazine is at its core, that’s content. The future is a diversified model and revenue mix, that is what Future has done strongly.”

Francois said “Amazon proved agile in buying the rights on the cheap, but it still has to demonstrate it can leverage them to significantly increase its e-commerce business footprint.”

Julian said it also showed how Sky, which has traditionally focused on sport, was pivoting its strategy to becoming an “aggregator”, offering viewers content from a range of sources.