The Premier League will earn 3.5% more per year from its domestic rights for 2025- 29 than today, enough to maintain the gap with rival competitions.
Sky will pay 7% more for as many as 70% more games and cement the prominence of its Premier League coverage, while the Saturday 3pm slot could host the Women’s Super League.
TNT Sports secures its premium profile and Amazon shifts its focus to the Champions League.
Unable to match Netflix, financially-pressed Hollywood studios are cutting content output and reassessing the DTC model
Price rises are being forced through, however for challengers this is asking a lot from subs, who don’t see an improvement in product or usage
The corporate landscape is fluid—loss-making DTC platforms and revenue-plunging linear channels are candidates for M&A
The Premier League has launched its first competitive rights auction since 2018, offering broadcasters a longer four-year cycle and 70 more live games.
Sky could reduce costs by cutting down on one weekly slot, but we expect it to fight for four packages, consistent with its history of prioritising the prominence of its Premier League coverage.
Competitive tension may be the strongest between TNT Sports and DAZN.
Warner Bros. Discovery is grappling with declining legacy cable revenues and its $48 billion debt burden. DTC losses have attenuated but de-leveraging will be trickier post-2023 as many of the easier cost-savings have been achieved.
The US launch of its DTC offering, Max, attempts to dovetail IP from across Warner Bros., alongside Discovery's food, lifestyle and documentary programming, and soon, CNN. Adding sports may prove more challenging.
In Europe, WBD’s rational strategy would be to maintain a mixed distribution strategy, agreeing exclusive deals for its DTC platform with incumbent aggregators such as Sky.
The games industry, with the potential to become the world’s largest media and entertainment sector by revenue, is undergoing profound transformation.
The consolidation of major developers is a response to a revenue model pivoting toward subscription, with direct consequences for those already in the subscription space: film, TV and music.
A technology-led creative medium, with an audience approaching three billion gamers, is seeing its franchises become more valuable and useful than ever.
Broadcaster decline accelerated in 2022, with record drops in reach and time spent. This was primarily driven by the lightest and youngest viewers leaving broadcast television while over-65s also reduced their viewing for the first time.
Loss of lighter viewers threatens the future viewing base of broadcasters and relevance to a new generation. Further, broadcaster status as the home of mass audiences becomes compromised.
However, retention of lighter viewers is not yet a lost cause. They are amongst the heaviest Netflix viewers, and the very lightest are spending more time in front of the TV set than previously—suggesting enduring appetite for TV-like content.
The UK lockdown since mid March has boosted TV time to levels not seen since 2014, with broadcast TV and online video each growing by nearly 40
minutes/person/day
While trends vary significantly by demographic, news consumption has been a common catalyst for linear TV’s growth, benefitting the BBC above all. Although Sky News has also flourished, Sky’s portfolio has been seriously impacted by the lack of live sport
2019 extended many of the long running trends of the last decade, but, notably, online video’s growth rate appeared to slow among youngsters, in contrast to older demographics. 35-54 year olds watching more VOD will have significant implications for linear broadcasters down the line