“I don’t believe that Netflix thinks in a way about ‘AAA’ or ‘AA,’ [industry lingo for premium, big-budget games] or any of that sort of traditional nomenclature about what defines a game,” said Gareth Sutcliffe, the head analyst covering the games industry for the market research service Enders Analysis. “I think they’re much more lateral in terms of defining the game experience, particularly when they are looking at a technology-led distribution model, around streaming, around multiple devices, tied in with the SVOD [subscription video on demand] offering.”

“It’ll be the largest television show globally for weeks. When that launches, it will be absolutely massive, and they’re shipping a game simultaneously,” Sutcliffe said. “I think that’s really aggressive, and I think that that’s really incredibly clever.”

As Karen Egan at Enders Analysis argued: “It is heartening to see that the CMA has taken the time to get to grips with the complexities of the industry”, so allowing a probable decision “counter to the knee-jerk assumption that four to three mergers are anti-competition”. True, network integration is hard, not least when cost cuts hurt staff morale. And the regulators would need to ensure Voda/Three lived up to its promises, with penalties for poor delivery. But the pair have a case that their merger is “pro-growth, pro-customer and pro-competitive”. The CMA is right not to hang up on this four-to-three deal.

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, also said the CMA appears to have all but approved the proposed Vodafone-Three merger.

Writing on LinkedIn, Egan said the CMA believes that the merger could be pro-competition “so long as it can be assured that the network promises of the merging parties will be fulfilled, and that the short-term customer protections that it talked about in its provisional findings (social tariffs, contract terms rolling over, wholesale reference offer) can be put in place.”

Egan pointed out that this is a step forward from the CMA’s provisional findings, “where it put forward such remedies, but also discussed structural remedies (although largely discounted them), and listed blocking the merger altogether as a remedy (which it did not discount).”

Three, which tends to have a younger customer base, generally has some of the cheapest monthly contracts among the four biggest mobile network operators, according to figures from Enders Analysis.

However, telecoms analysts are not convinced that the tie-up will necessarily lead to higher prices. “There doesn’t seem to be a correlation between fewer mobile players and consumer pricing,” said Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis.

“The UK will be better off if, as seems, this merger is finally approved,” Karen Egan, at Enders Research,said in a LinkedIn post. Blocking the deal “would not have yielded a positive outcome for the economy or consumers.”

James Barford, director of telecoms at Enders Analysis, says convincing investors of the company’s fibre broadband strategy is Kirkby’s greatest success. “Rolling out full fibre into 30 million homes is a huge undertaking.

“Under previous management they suspended the dividend [in 2020], the first time since privatisation in 1984, in order to pay for it, saying that when they finished the rollout it would increase free cashflow to £3 billion a year by the end of the decade.”

Barford says that Kirkby, BT’s first female chief executive, has convinced investors that the fibre rollout (which has been much slower than in other European countries) will happen and will make money in the long run.

“The reason the share price is up is because she is getting everything right, giving clear forward guidance and, importantly, sticking to BT’s core purpose. There is still a long way to go but it appears the full success is not priced in.”

Its operating profit fell to £646 million, from £898 million in 2023. Global is understood to be a laggard within the Business division, frustrating Kirkby. Karen Egan at Enders Analysis said: 'The problem is Global sells a lot of legacy services that simply are not that profitable.'

Gareth Sutcliffe, head of video games at the research firm Enders Analysis, said a lack of investment in the sector was “having a negative impact, particularly on indies and mid-tier studios, and that’s where you’re seeing this real pain point”.

A report from Enders Analysis has argued that generative artificial intelligence “will not alter the fundamental commercial reality for the news” as the shift online did previously.

The research firm cautioned publishers to be “realistic” about the productivity and revenue gains possible from AI, but added that ignoring AI would be “a mistake”.

The report found there have been some valuable uses for AI in the newsroom — but argued that there may not be an “immediate, killer news use case to raise revenues”.

AI can also help to create “more sophisticated metadata for archival material”, they wrote, in turn making it easier for journalists and readers to access a publisher’s back catalogue. This could have revenue implications for local publishers in particular, they said, “where some historical material has barely been digitised”.

A $1.1 billion rights acquisition fund establishes Grup Mediapro once more as a player on the sports brokering scene, though not on the scale of European leader Sky, which invested $3.2 billion in 2024/25 nor even Canal+, whose 2024/25 outlay is $628 million, according to Enders Analysis