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In October, despite lighter viewers consuming three times more online content compared to 2022, daily viewing only increased minimally due to low initial engagement, according to Enders Analysis. In contrast, heavy ITV linear viewers increased their online viewing nearly fivefold.

“There is Netflix and then there is sort of everyone else,” says Tom Harrington, head of television at Enders Analysis. “Everyone except Netflix is making losses quarter by quarter. While Netflix hasn’t of course yet balanced its billions in losses it is now making profits and will catch that up pretty quickly now.”

“The monetisation strategy of streaming content has been quite simply crazy,” says Harrington. “Viewers have been bingeing content that is now more expensive than ever to create despite the history of TV and film being all about ‘windows’ of commercialising content on different platforms to make them pay over and over again for years. It just hasn’t been profitable.”

Karen Egan, a senior telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis, said Lebara would “attract a high [ebitda] multiple” as MVNOs have low levels of capital expenditure and are becoming “very attractive” to network operators because of their subscriber bases.

“I think that multiples could be higher now given the strength of the MVNOs both in terms of growth trajectory and ability to move between network operators,” Egan added.

Karen Egan, a senior telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis, said governments were becoming increasingly wary of allowing significant foreign influence over incumbent telecoms operators.

But she said Middle Eastern companies saw a chance to enhance their reputations by being associated with a “reasonably leading-edge, sizeable company” such as Telefónica. The United Arab Emirates group e& already has a stake in Vodafone.

“It’s very difficult to work out whether it’s the format, presenter or both when a new format doesn’t work – TV isn’t as close and confessional as radio, so there isn’t a TV equivalent to Ken Bruce,” says Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis. “But with Question of Sport there was clearly an audience response to the retooling, including the insulting name change, as the viewing drop over the past two seasons was quite precipitous, even for 2023. It’s not that Paddy McGuinness is a bad presenter, it’s just that he and the other changes chafed too much with the audience’s long-bedded expectations the show. The reasons for the BBC wanting to do this are obvious, but the futility of the attempt was completely predictable.”

Karen Egan, senior telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis, said Iliad’s announcement was ‘something of a surprise’, highlighting that the firm previously said it had moved from its offer for Vodafone Italy made last year.

‘Iliad may be banking on Vodafone management being under greater pressure at this stage,’ Egan said.

“This operation would have a good chance of stopping the price war because Iliad would become a small part of Vodafone,” explains François Godard, analyst at Enders, who emphasizes, however, that any consolidation movement will have to be validated by Brussels and that ;there are therefore uncertainties. Iliad could also have to battle with Swisscom, present in the peninsula via Fastweb and interested in Vodafone in Italy.

“Just as Italy was a pioneer in mobile telephony with prepaid plans, it is trying an interesting and unique experiment with this operation,” explains François Godard. Potentially, it is a way of pooling operators' network expenses and giving them oxygen. But everything remains to be drawn, the result is uncertain.