Enders Analysis provides a subscription research service covering the media, entertainment, mobile and fixed telecommunications industries in Europe, with a special focus on new technologies and media.
Our research is independent and evidence-based, covering all sides of the market: consumers, leading companies, industry trends, forecasts and public policy & regulation. A complete list of our research can be found here.
Claire Enders was quoted in The Times on BBC may strip free licences from millions in means test. She said “It is bound to outrage millions of people that they will be paying for their licence fee. There will be 3.5 million extraordinarily angry people.”
After the most challenging period in its history since 2012, Facebook has been able to stabilise its fundamental metrics and announce a major product overhaul
Despite talk of a business model pivot, Facebook’s focus remains on advertising, whose growth will remain concentrated in developed markets
News publishers wishing to stay relevant on the upgraded product set need to target exclusive layers of social interaction, with groups particularly important
Francois Godard was quoted in the Financial Times on France’s Iliad to raise €2bn by selling mobile towers to Cellnex. He said “Selling towers to Cellnex makes sense, the French group was taking advantage of the fact that financial markets are ready to give a higher value to towers when they are set aside in a separate corporate shell than when they are buried in an operator’s balance sheet. But it does not change the Iliad business model.”
Sky made a surprisingly weak start to 2019, with revenue growth decelerating to 1.9% (the first time below 4% since the European businesses merged in 2015), due to weaker ARPU trends.
However, Sky expects improvement to follow, blaming one-off factors in the quarter. The ARPU weakness drove EBITDA down 11.3%, but this should bounce back across the rest of 2019 as football rights costs turn from a drag to a positive.
Comcast highlighted collaborations with Sky across tech, advertising, content distribution and even news, stating it is on track to achieve the anticipated $500 million in annual synergies over the next couple of years.
Tom Harrington was quoted in the Times on Dame Carolyn, are you sure we will be amused by your TV streaming service? He said “They are wishfully thinking that BritBox’s subscribers will be in the millions, but look at something like the streaming service Disney Life; that has only 100,000 subscribers. Then there is Now TV, which has fewer than 2m, and that has been around for seven years and has some of the best content in the world.”
Douglas McCabe was quoted in the Financial Times on Guardian owner hits profit benchmark after decades of losses. He said “The leadership team has done very well to bring this phase over the line, but the next phase, covering both the sustainability of the business and a core audience retention, will be more complex and challenging.”
The commercial challenges for media online are well-documented: online advertising pays for utilities such as search and social networking many times over, but not for media beyond user-generated content and low-investment journalism.
There are also costs from a user perspective: wasted time, harmful content created to attract views, and the collection, sale, use and frequent leakage to criminals of personal data.
Different sectors have found varying success with alternatives: games, video and music are attracting user payments, driving the paid online economy up 15.5% to £8.2 billion in 2018.
Disney now controls third-party content aggregator Hulu, which has 25 million subscribers in the US. Ramped up by Fox content, Hulu’s operating losses are expected to peak in FY2019 at $1.5 billion, with profits by FY2023 or FY2024
Serving only Disney content, Disney+ launches in the US at the low price of $6.99/month this November, and in 2020 in Europe and Asia Pacific in 2021, aiming to reach the challenging goal of 60-90 million subscribers in five years
ESPN+, Hulu, Disney+ combined could contribute 13% of Disney’s revenues by 2024, which does not intend to disturb existing channels and windows for catalogue and new content, aside from withdrawing content from Netflix
The economic model of TV production relies upon a vibrant market for back catalogue content; programming that has traditionally driven the desirability of many linear channels and slots
New release strategies, along with the hyper-concentrated viewing encouraged by video-on-demand and the round-the-clock availability of shows calls the longevity of the value of content into question
Our analysis suggests that programmes that previously would be leisurely distributed through broadcast could now feasibly be “worn out” more quickly. This could have ramifications for the whole sector, with more content investment required “upfront” and new financial and distribution models required