But the situation can also be interpreted differently, from a more financial than marketing perspective. The loss of even a single match would push Canal+ to reduce its bid, as the end of exclusivity represents a loss of value for both subscribers and prospects. "The exclusivity argument is indeed decisive for recruiting new customers," adds François Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis.

 

Tom Harrington of media industry research firm Enders Analysis told Telegraph Sport an increased number of late kick-offs would be “bad news” for the BBC and ITV.

“It makes a massive difference,” he added. “There’s going to be somebody who’s probably going to be pretty unlucky and have a big game at 1am.”

“You can’t please everybody,” Harrington added, pointing out that breaks in play during matches played earlier in the day would hardly be ideal for the BBC and ITV amid the potential for long delays wreaking havoc with broadcast schedules.

But it’s still a far cry from chasing the influencer playbook, Keeping its video aligned with its brand DNA is a good call for orgnizations like The Economist where most journalists were hired for their writing and analysis rather than their charisma in front of a camera, said Laura Darcey, research analyst at media analysis firm Enders. “The Economist must remain authentic to its brand and not erode its credibility by trying to fit itself too closely into the image of platform-native creators,” she said.

 

On the cost side, Enders Analysis media and telecoms analyst François Godard told Investors’ Chronicle that the biggest savings would come from consolidating their respective streaming platforms – Canal+ and Showmax – and cutting fixed costs in advertising technology systems and IT infrastructure.

“I am curious to see how Canal+ can reorganise the business to withstand these things because [it] cannot stop power cuts or devaluation, so they will have to become more resilient in an environment that is unstable,” said Godard.

“It’s a riskier asset, but you have to take risks if you want growth because there is no explosive growth in France,” said Godard.

“S4 was founded with the whole idea being that we’re going to be tech-enabled, we’re driving the digital transformation,” said Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “So it does look quite bad when we’re in arguably the biggest digital transformation we’re going to see for a generation, and they’re performing really badly in the midst of it.”

“There’s an element of looking inwards and strategising that needs to happen a little bit more than is currently taking place,” said Holubowskyj, who argued that S4 and WPP in particular are focused more on preparing for the next AI-driven phase of the industry than trying to maximise performance today.

According to an Enders Analysis report, Publishers’ (in)visibility problem, released in July, the likelihood of a publisher's words triggering an AI Overview tripled between March and July, with one-third of keywords from The Sun and The Mirror triggering one. By contrast, only 16% of The Telegraph's keywords did the same.

The analysis firm estimated that the commercial effect would be "modest" in the short term but "likely to intensify over time".

"If there were to be a merger between Canal+ and Sky, as some are suggesting, it wouldn't be a merger of equals, and Groupe Bolloré would have to put a lot of money on the table," explains François Godard of Enders Analysis. This doesn't mean that Sky is immune to questions from the platforms. "There's a certain uncertainty about what the next step in the group's history is, for which Comcast paid more than it's worth today," the analyst continues. "For example, the company isn't really managing to harness the power of British independent production in fiction."

 

The Sun is the largest UK newspaper on YouTube with 6 million subscribers, according to Enders Analysis’ YouTube and Journalism: the News Frontier Report published in February. This will have been aided by two factors: first mover advantage (The Sun’s main channel was established in 2007, vs the Mail in 2012 or the Guardian in late 2014); and its upload frequency — the Sun posted 12 times a day in the period Enders reviewed the publisher, mostly focused on war in Ukraine, UK poliitcs, crime footage and the British royal family. Originals marks its concerted push to broaden into other genres for video, said Enders’ senior research analyst Abi Watson. 

“With declining visibility in search, social video is going to become a more important touchpoint,” said Watson. “In June, roughly a third of the keywords the Sun ranked for in Sistrix’s dataset triggered a Google AI Overview, and that figure has likely gone up since,” she said. 

Chuck in a slumping advertising revenue as ad dollars follow readers to the new digital platforms, the threat of AI content creation in fashion and publishing, and glossy magazines’ failure to create a robust subscription model and Condé Nast “is battling a terrifying storm”, as Enders analyst Douglas McCabe puts it.

McCabe questions her strategy. He points out that in the UK Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair and Glamour, Esquire, Stylist, Grazia and Harper’s Bazaar have all reduced the number of issues they publish and the long gap between each issue has meant many have faded to irrelevance. “Small and beautiful usually tends to be small and less relevant or slowly die,” he says. It is not clear what advertisers, who keep the lights on at Condé Nast, will make of fewer issues.