Douglas said widespread quarantine measures had effectively “put a pause button [on the] entire outdoor advertising sector."

Douglas warned “If your entire business is sports journalism, this is a challenging period.”

He added The Athletic is not alone. Every media outlet was going to have to “think very creatively” about its sports coverage.

Tom said “The problem with streaming services is that audiences expect every TV show ever made to be available right now, but subscriptions are underpriced. Netflix gets around that by borrowing and Amazon uses it as a loss leader for e-commerce. Disney used to make a lot of money selling shows to other broadcasters, but its businesses with the largest profit margins now are amusement parks, cruises and merchandise. They want to reach massive scale, because if kids watch Frozen 2, they’ll want to go to Disney World and spend hundreds of pounds a day going on the ride or buying the outfits.”

Douglas said “When a lockdown phase is initiated it is unlikely to make much sense for free print media to continue. Any business that is designed for commuters, or at the very least relies on people moving around, will find it very difficult to continue as normal."

Douglas said the Independent’s “lean newsrooms focused on a distinctive take and curation” offered a guide to the future of news media for smaller publishing brands. 

Francois said any decision to ditch the Premier League’s existing business model would be “crazy” because Masters would “lose billions” as existing agreements were unwound: “He’d have to start afresh with nothing, no subscribers.”

He added that the operation would have to be supported by vast cloud servers. “That would be very expensive and take a long time."

Douglas said TMG had taken some “bold decisions” recently on leaving the ABC system and putting up the cover price. “The WHSmith approach fits with the Telegraph trying some radical ideas.”