BT’s acquisition of Premiership Rugby rights underlines its intentions to create a solid premium sports channel with expected launch in summer 2013
BT’s entry into the sports arena is part of a wider TV platform/content strategy that embraces the launch of a much enlarged basic channel offer, integration with YouView and fibre roll-out
Although expected to post significant losses on its sports channels over the next three years, BT’s commitment appears long term
In this presentation we show our analysis of the UK mobile market performance to Q2 2012 and consider the outlook both in terms of market growth and competitive dynamics
In this presentation we show our analysis of revenue growth trends for mobile operators in the top five European markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain). The historical analysis is based on the published results of the operators, although they include our estimates where their data is inconsistent or not complete. A copy of the underlying data in spreadsheet format is available to our subscription clients on request.
In this report we show our analysis of the performance, key trends, competitive dynamics and factors impacting the UK broadband, telephony and pay-TV markets
The first part of the report focusses on market level performance and KPIs such as volume and revenue growth, net adds, pricing and ARPU, and market shares as well as our analysis of key developments in high speed broadband and pay-TV offerings
The second covers the individual results of the four largest ISPs (BT, Virgin Media, BSkyB and TalkTalk Group) in the context of the wider market developments
Though likely to be appealed, the CAT’s dismissal of the Ofcom WMO remedy seems certain to cut off any further re-regulation of pay-TV in the next two years
The CAT decision hands Sky pricing power in the wholesale of its premium sports content, while forcing other retailers to switch their focus on to attempts to enter into commercial supply agreements with Sky
Financially Sky has potentially most to gain and VMed most to lose from the CAT decision, while BT’s strategy to expand its content offer is highly challenged
Sky generated 14% growth in operating profits in FY 2012 in spite of a comparative 53 week reporting year in 2012, the price freeze induced by a tough economic climate and large incremental investment in programming
The increase was much as we expected with predictable strong growth in home communications, wash-through of TV and HD subscriptions, low churn and most notably improved operating efficiencies
The medium term outlook for operating profit growth in the existing business remains very promising, with further potential upside following the launch of NOW TV and the acquisition of Parthenon
Vodafone Europe’s June quarter service revenue growth contracted sharply to -1.6% from -0.2% in the previous quarter
Given various one-off factors, and a likely continued macroeconomic driven slowdown, we expect that Vodafone’s underlying competitive performance is unchanged
The outlook is still poor, with macroeconomic and regulatory headwinds joined by a self-inflicted problem in Spain. Cost control at least appears to be going well, with slowing smartphone sales growth keeping handset costs under control
Sky has launched NOW TV, an unbundled internet video service offering non-Sky households pay-as-you-go access to select Sky content, starting with movies, with sports added later in the autumn and TV shows to follow NOW TV addresses the growing opportunity for broadband TV, primarily appealing to the 8 million non-pay-TV households that have broadband – the same target audience as Netflix, LoveFilm, BT Vision and YouView We expect NOW TV to have only incremental impact on Sky’s financials, but it has the potential to put Sky in pole position in the nascent market for over-the-top TV
France’s Orange Sport closed last month after France Télécom declined to bid for a renewal of its four-year licence to broadcast Ligue 1 football. The future of its sister film channel, Orange Cinéma Séries, remains unclear.
The strategic aim for Orange Sport was confused from the start – standalone profit centre or loss leader, fully fledged alternative to Canal+ or add-on to it.
Orange’s premium TV project was a failure: we estimate its cumulative losses at €1.2 billion, while Orange’s broadband market share and retail price premium shrank during the four years of its operation. But it did arguably strengthen Orange’s hand in carriage negotiations with Canal+.
News Corp will split publishing out of its business by creating a company to include newspapers in the US, UK and Australia as well as book publisher HarperCollins News Corp revenue growth has for some time been driven by explosive growth in cable network programming revenues, with slower revenue growth in film, TV, satellite TV and publishing The structural decline of print-based businesses is the main reason cited for the split. However, the Dow Jones and WSJ, both serving a B2B market, will be at the heart of the new publishing company’s value