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.
Service revenue took a dip in Q4 to 1.5% as a waning price rise impact in the UK combined with the loss of positive one-offs in Germany.
We expect growth to slow further through 2024 as many operators implement lower index-linked price rises which are also coming under increasing regulatory scrutiny.
Vodafone has made progress on its turnaround plan—striking deals for its Italian and Spanish units—but it is not yet out of the woods, with ongoing challenges in Germany and approval still uncertain in the UK.
News UK and DMG Media’s joint venture to combine their printing operations has been given the green light by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), concluding the supply of services to third parties would not be adversely affected
The CMA concluded that the printing operations of the two publishers were not particularly close competitors for third-party customers. Geography and spare capacity—as we have long argued—were far more influential factors
The CMA’s green light is a timely reminder of the importance of industry collaboration for the profitability of the news industry’s print era, with useful indicators for the evolving online market
Streaming profitability beckons, but owes much to the profitable services folded into companies’ DTC segments alongside the headline streamers.
There is a broader move towards bundling and price rises. The former bolsters subscriber additions and lifetime value but is ARPU-dilutive, while price rises will bump up both ARPU and churn.
2024 marks the first year with multiple players at scale in the ad space, as Prime Video entered the market. Other streamers with high CPMs and lower scale may be forced to re-examine their offerings.
Meta's China risk is overstated: the spend from Chinese advertisers is diverse and resilient to everything short of a full-blown trade war.
Apple (and Tesla) are in the more precarious position of selling directly in-market, and face sharpening domestic competition.
Amazon's exit from selling in China still leaves it exposed: its marketplace strategy is built on Chinese sellers, whose potential routes to market are proliferating with local platforms going global.
Sony PlayStation’s next CEO will have hard decisions to make: compete against a resurgent multiplatform Microsoft, or retreat and defend an increasingly rickety PlayStation console model.
New gaming hardware will have an outsize influence in the year ahead, giving gamers unprecedented choice, starting with XR headsets and continuing to a likely new Nintendo Switch.
YouTube’s foray into browser-based games will be the service to watch in 2024. If successful, streaming services, including Netflix, will be on track to become heavyweight game platforms.
The value of the domestic rights of major European leagues is falling due to the declining competitive intensity between broadcasters.
The Premier League’s new rights deal extends its lead, while Serie A faces a 10% fall in revenue next season and Ligue 1 struggles to get a flat fee.
Sky and DAZN have cemented their status as Europe’s top football broadcasters. Amazon has refocused to one game per week.
Ten years of fierce and implacable rivalry between Canal+ Group and TPS, the two French pay-TV operators, is expected to end in November 2006, when they close their merger deal and Canal+ France emerges. This report examines the strategic rationale for pay-TV consolidation in the French TV market, where digital terrestrial TV has recently launched and where TV-over-DSL is rapidly being deployed, as well as the potential for the currently low pay-TV margins to rise
Spain’s top football club FC Barcelona (Barça) has threatened to withdraw its broadcast licence from Sogecable unless it matches an offer from Mediapro that is almost double the current annual fee for the two football seasons commencing 2006/2007
The present TV advertising slump appears due to a uniquely British combination of very rapid digital TV growth and singular advertising airtime regulations that include the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) remedy
Vivendi Q1 2006 quarterly results show solid underlying improvement in earnings, but disappointing subscription figures, which fell by 40,000 in the quarter
We regard meeting even this extended deadline as difficult given their slowing growth, churn problems and the increasing network costs associated with their network outsourcing deals, and furthermore EBITDA is unlikely to improve significantly from 2007 onwards