Canal+, however, would have enough leverage to strike an exclusive distribution deal with this new HBO-Discovery+ service to aggregate it as part of its cable bundle in a pact similar to the one it signed with Disney + in France, according to Francois Godard at Enders Analysis. Godard also predicts such deal would have strong chances of being approved by the anti-trust board.

In 2011, the anti-trust board blocked Canal+ Group’s attempt to merge with OCS and launch a premium pay TV channel, but Godard says “the world has changed and Canal+ is no longer dominating the French market.” “Watchdog authorities are aware that Canal+ must consolidate to face off global streamers like Disney which are spend €30 billion in content this year,” Godard continued. “Canal+’s strategy today is to increase their scale, they’re on a world market and they need to ramp up their worth and subscriber base to finance bigger productions,” the analyst continued.

Analyst at Enders Analysis Tom Harrington warned that such a move could undermine the “purity” of big streamers, and told City A.M. that the major selling point of no adverts and low prices are “now being eroded before our eyes

Francois said “If approved, this decision will potentially reset the European television market in a way liberalisation and commercial television reshaped the market in the 1980s. It is absolutely crucial.”

Francois said “All of its competitors have sports. Netflix is alone without sports, so you could see it bowing to market pressure.”

Godard credits Netflix for showing “discipline” and for not “losing its mind” by overbidding for the rights. It does of course raise the question of whether it can afford to.

James said “Virgin Media has been saying for a few years that it would be interested in a discount sub-brand so it makes sense. Virgin Media could also over time shift TalkTalk over to its network, which would be very lucrative,” he added, noting that TalkTalk only bought internet services from wholesale providers such as BT’s Openreach.

BT’s share price fell more than 8 per cent before the close on Friday.

“I think that regulators will remain extremely sceptical of mobile-to-mobile mergers and fixed-to-fixed mergers."

Alice said "The only thing news publishers can do is try and accelerate the migration of print customers to digital."

But that's easier said than done. Free print titles are particularly exposed, according to Enders.

"By its very nature, a consumer of print is not hooked into the digital subscription and there's no obvious path to take them from print to digital. The only inevitable consequence in my view is to have a decline in margin."

Joseph said “The D2C market is set to consolidate, as the many, many businesses with unsustainable unit economics are exposed by a downturn. Add to that the fact that targeting and attribution are getting harder, due to technical and legal restrictions piling up.”

Abi described the BBC’s results as “really good” but added that they followed a year full of lockdowns, meaning that a production rebound and pent-up advertising demand were likely to have helped.

WBD has “figured out that, actually, the only axis they need to pay attention to, given the importance of these businesses and their core markets, is — No. 1 — the U.S., then the U.K., Germany and France,” says Claire Enders, founder of leading London-based media consultancy Enders Analysis.

“There isn’t any other place they need to play,” she adds. This axis “drives their business to an extraordinary extent, and they can have much thinner services elsewhere. It’s absolutely the right strategy.”

She added “All that mystery of, ‘Are HBO and Sky going to sign a new deal?’ ‘Is pay TV going to die in Europe?’ Well, that question is over. There isn’t going to be the death of pay TV. These companies are going to be relicensing material that their aged 50-something audiences are really going to enjoy.”

Joseph said Twitter has a good chance of forcing Musk to pay what now looks like a very high price for the company because “most people don’t come to business and legal negotiations with the bad faith and poor behaviour that Musk has displayed”. “That gives Twitter good leverage to get a renegotiated deal that avoids a full court battle: either a slightly reduced purchase price, or a more substantial damages payment than the $1 billion."