Football leagues must think innovatively about maintaining broad exposure, but relying on advertising revenues from free-to-air TV makes no economic sense.

Creating league-operated direct-to-consumer platforms would undermine the very competition between broadcasters that has propelled rights.

The only realistic option for sustainable growth is deeper, longer-term partnerships with broadcasters.

As we noted previously—despite the explosion in volume and access to content—long-form viewing is narrowing around fewer programmes

At the same time, younger viewers are watching a greater proportion of video alone, resulting in a growing schism between what is watched by young and older viewers

The upshot is a two-pronged escalation of pressure on content providers—trying to create a hit when long-form viewing is both declining and concentrating, while, by age at least, adult audience demand becomes increasingly binary

As viewing moves online, broadcasters’ on-demand players make up a growing proportion of viewing, becoming central to their future strategies.

However, even though SVOD viewing might have begun to plateau, BVOD growth cannot yet balance the decline of linear broadcast.

Of this shrinking pie, 2023 saw most of the major broadcast players increase their viewing shares.

Public service broadcasters are in a position to plan for the long term with commercial licences renewed for ten years, an updated prominence regime via the Media Bill and a government broadly supportive of the BBC.

With the Premier League and EFL rights secure to the end of the decade, Sky can plan for the future from a position of strength.

Relationships between Sky and the PSBs have improved markedly recently, and as all can now plan for the long-term, this should provide further opportunities to cement relationships for the benefit of the broadcasting ecosystem and viewers.

Dramas from the public service broadcasters based on books consistently bring in bigger audiences than those that are not, a trend driven by certain genres, especially detective mysteries and thrillers.

A greater volume of newer book IP is being developed into programming, but this preference is not necessarily reflected in audience figures.                                 

Younger demographics are less enamoured with dramas based on books than older viewers. There are however notable exceptions, while attracting younger audiences may have more to do with the age, genre, and fame of the IP.

The linear TV broadcast industry has kept its oligopolistic structure remarkably intact over the last 50 years against a background of much technological innovation and re-regulation, but now faces a new wave of innovation that promises growth of non-linear at the expense of linear True disruption can only occur by solving the device challenge of developing on a mass scale new, compelling and innovative ways to access content, but so far non-linear has achieved a very small share of total viewing while linear viewing levels are as high as ever Although non-linear viewing may become substantial, it is unlikely to result in fundamental change in the distribution value in the industry

The broadcast and online success of the London Olympics and Paralympics, though never in doubt, was beyond expectations.

Despite the large growth in mobile devices and rise in social media, audience data underlined the importance of live viewing on the TV set in the living room.

Although commercial audiences (other than Channel 4) took a battering, the Olympics/Paralympics was a blip and unlikely to harm budgets across the full year or have significant knock-on consequences in 2013.

YouView, the hybrid DTT/IPTV service backed by the public service broadcasters, is here, but with an initial retail box price of £300 it will be heavily dependent on the subsidies offered by ISP distributors BT and TalkTalk The TV market has evolved since YouView’s conception in 2008, with many other internet-enabled options now available; its managed and integrated approach gives it some advantages but doesn’t make it a ‘must have’ We expect YouView to mainly appeal to Freeview and BT Vision upgraders and project take-up between 1-3 million TV homes by 2015, though if the product improves and pricing falls dramatically it could see faster growth

The London Olympics promise to be a major success for both the free-to-air broadcast licensees and the leading pay-TV platforms as a result of co-operative deals being forged between them

Recent distribution agreements with Sky provide the BBC and Eurosport with a massively bigger window to showcase their credentials in in-depth sports coverage and new technologies, especially 3D

For Sky, and assuming VMed in due course, there exist a number of potential indirect commercial benefits, as the message is sent out loud and clear that there is no better place to go for London Olympics free-to-air coverage than the pay-TV platforms

The launch of Netflix in the UK and Ireland has ignited the debate on the threat from over-the-top video to pay-TV services from Sky, Virgin Media and BT

Unlike in the US, Netflix’s UK prospects and those of competitors such as Lovefilm, are fundamentally limited, given the availability of low priced pay-TV with strong on-demand components included for free

The impact of Netflix on the UK pay-TV industry is therefore likely to be even smaller than the (hard to discern) effect it has had in the US