The record £1,712 million to be spent yearly on live TV rights to the PL from 2016/17, about equal to the entire BBC TV programming budget, has hammered home the continuing importance of premium sports, especially PL football, in cementing scale in pay-TV

Several regulatory processes are still in play that could influence market developments over the next few years. We expect Ofcom’s WMO remedy to continue in close to its present form, while the VULA margin squeeze sets significant restraints on BT Sport over rights payments

Although the Virgin Media complaint to Ofcom has raised genuine competition concerns over the design of the PL auction, which the regulator is investigating, we see little opportunity for significant intervention

The UK residential communications sector continues to be in rude health, with revenue growth in Q4 accelerating by 1ppt to 5.7%, the strongest it has been for years, with all of the operators enjoying an improvement. Volumes were strong, and ARPU even stronger, with the latter driving most of the revenue growth progress, driven by firm pricing and high speed broadband adoption

Growing revenues and profits in an industry tends to encourage both investment and competition, and this is certainly the case in the fixed telecoms market, as BT announced plans for higher speed services using G.fast and Virgin Media announced a 4 million premises network expansion. The timings suggest that Virgin Media will keep its edge; given historic trends and its network capabilities we expect it to be offering superior speeds to G.fast by the time G.fast hits the mass market

In competitive terms the biggest short term threat is EE, which is growing its broadband base at 15%, and may accelerate further in 2015. Its success appear to stem not so much from the raw appeal of ‘quad play’ bundling as improved performance in the mechanics of cross-selling from physical shops. EE itself may be less of a threat if its planned merger with BT is completed, but Vodafone is launching broadband services in the spring, and H3G/O2 may yet be encouraged into the market

The latest auction of live televised Premier League rights has exceeded all expectations as the next three-year package commencing with the 2016/17 football season will cost £5,136 million, 70% up on the current £3,018 million

By shouldering much the greater cost increase of 83%, Sky has held on to five out of seven packages, including the most prized Super Sunday; however, the latest auction results underline the continuing core importance of PL football in spite of all the recent multi-product diversification and investment in non-sport content

Though still the smaller of the two parties with just two packages, there is much to satisfy BT in the results. Its cost increase was an easily-affordable 30%, which will make Ofcom's VULA test more manageable given upcoming European Champions League payments. At the same time, the pressure on Sky's profitability has increased

Sky plc, the coming together of BSkyB, Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia, has enjoyed an excellent start, as adjusted H1 2015 figures delivered a 5% increase in revenues versus a 3% increase in costs, resulting in EBITDA growth of 7% and with free cash flow up by 25%

The strong financial results were accompanied by strong subscriber growth figures, especially in the operations covering Austria, Germany, Ireland and the UK, while all markets showed large reductions in churn, reinforcing confidence in the strategic approach of Sky plc

It is too early to assess Sky’s delivery of its target group synergies. Individually, the former BSkyB and Sky Deutschland markets may be showing much stronger subscriber and product growth, but they also look to be more exposed to risk over football rights, while Sky Italia has more going for it than may appear at first sight

Speculation has arisen about a possible acquisition by Sky of Mediaset Premium, the DTT competitor to Sky Italia. The unprofitable platform faces a 50% cost increase this summer due to the start of new football broadcast contracts

Getting rid of competition would allow Sky to raise prices, but also burden it with the new contracts. At best, if it kept the Premium subscribers on DTT to limit churn, Sky would have a small revenue upside

But the regulatory risk looks substantial, including mandated third-party access to the platform and wholesale of content. On balance, we believe that it would be better for Sky to let the situation play out

For the second year running, 2014 has seen a steep year-on-year decline in total daily average viewing time, which fell by almost 5%, and was again, as in 2013, greatest among younger age demos, especially among children aged 4-15 where the decline reached double figures

Connectivity and the rapidly growing population of smartphones and tablets appear the main, though not the only, causes of a decline that appears general across the main PSB, PSB family and non-PSB channel groups. The decline nevertheless varies by channel genre, with the more youth oriented, such as Children and Music, feeling the connectivity squeeze the most

Whilst the great majority of non-PSB channels are only available on the pay-TV platforms, the DTT platform provides a significant audience and advertising contribution (ballpark estimate of £150-200 million per annum) to the relatively small group of leading free-to-air non-PSB channels, which are also less constrained in developing their online initiatives than the mixed advertising/subscription non-PSB channels on the pay-TV platforms

With the completion of digital switchover still on track for mid 2012, stabilisation of the main digital broadcast platforms is expected, with roughly equal numbers of subscription pay-TV and free TV homes, though with marked differences between the platforms in terms of demographic composition and the proportion of pay-TV customers

Further marked differences exist between the satellite, cable and terrestrial platforms with regard to PVR adoption, notably higher in pay-TV households where distribution can benefit from box subsidies and greater product consistency. National PVR penetration of TV homes is expected to grow from slightly below 50% in 2010 to over 70% in 2015

As DSO nears completion, the stage is set for broadband connectivity. Although household penetration of internet-enabled TV devices is expected to exceed 50% by 2015, the emergence of hybrid broadcast and broadband services is expected to proceed much more slowly, limited by a number of factors – not least the ability of service providers to monetise their non-linear on demand offerings

Sky Songs will shutter on 7 February 2011, ending a brand extension experiment that probably cost parent BSkyB some £5 million end-to-end

A PC-based ad-free subscription service, Sky Songs failed to offer the mobility and exclusive content that music fans are most willing to pay for

Spotify’s reported 750,000 European customers as of November 2010 have moved the subscription side closer to breakeven, while the ad-supported side bleeds on

In this short presentation we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to September 2010, based on the published results of the major service providers and Ofcom telephony data. We include our own estimates where reported data is incomplete. This quarter’s edition includes a revision to some historical trends resulting from our own interpretation of BT’s recent adjustment to the volume of unbundled lines.

Highlights in the quarter included exceptionally strong growth in broadband net additions at Sky and the resumption of the long term rate of decline in broadband market growth by volume.

A large gap has opened up between the different platforms in the five years since HD launched in the UK, with the pay-TV platforms – above all Sky – gaining a large lead over the free-to-air satellite and terrestrial platforms

With HD Ready TV sets now counting for almost half the total population of TV sets in the UK, the big issue facing the free-to-air platforms is the number of channels, where Sky (now 52 HD channels) and Virgin Media (now 28 HD channels) are expanding their lead over the free-to-air platforms Freeview (now 4 channels) and Freesat (now 3 channels)

Freeview in particular offers no clear evolutionary pathway beyond five channels in the next five years, except through acquisition of more capacity in the coming spectrum auction, where the outcome is very uncertain or via streamed high capacity broadband, which faces significant challenges in building penetration