The Italian football league is auctioning its media rights for up to five seasons from 2024/25, with bids due by 14 June.

As in previous cycles, Sky and DAZN will probably bid below the minimum prices, which could trigger further auctions.

Plans for a league DTC service are unrealistic, and free-to-air broadcasts would be uneconomical.

On 18 May 2023, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2023 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Barclays, Financial Times, and Salesforce

With over 550 attendees and over 40 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives, policy leaders, and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation, and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry

This is the edited transcript of Session One, covering: the future of digital experiences, the streaming economy, and harnessing AI for good. Videos of the presentations will be available on the conference website

Disney is deep into a race to improve direct-to-consumer (DTC) earnings faster than linear TV profitability falls. It will be a close call.

To get through the profit-depressed transition, Disney is doubling down on digital. Bob Iger now appears decided to keep Hulu, and will reduce content spending on long-term IP creation.

In Europe, Disney’s battle plan is one step behind, with significant price increases yet to be tried, cuts to be implemented, and sales to broadcast partners just beginning.

The total value of European football media rights has stagnated since the end of the last decade, translating into a real terms decline.

New entrants like DAZN and Amazon have occupied the space left open by incumbents such as Sky and Canal+.

Serie A, Ligue 1 and the Premier League will tender rights this year, entertaining unrealistic expectations of bids from Apple.

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.

Disney’s media and entertainment division plunged into losses as SVOD content cost increases outpaced revenue growth.

Cost cuts will primarily impact non-sports and international output, raising questions about the supply of Disney+’s content in Europe.

Bob Iger’s reorganisation to three operating units will be transformative only when associated with a growth strategy.

Structural shifts in the delivery of video are causing long-form viewing to coalesce around fewer programmes—this comes despite an explosion in the volume, spend and perceptual accessibility of content

For the time being this theoretically favours the largest of shows, along with the declining number of content providers that are able to create and distribute them at scale, forming critical masses of interest

Incoming technologies leveraging AI and virtual production will have the ability to drastically lower production costs. But until that happens the spend on most programming will become increasingly less efficient

DAZN has published its 2021 results, with losses extending to $1.4 billion, a situation that will likely have ameliorated in 2022, as the company looks to breakeven in 2023.

With the Champions League rights renewed in Germany, and crucial distribution deals secured in Italy and Spain, DAZN has a firmer foothold in its three major European markets.

Price increases in major markets and ancillary revenue streams will help stem losses, but achieving break-even by 2023 is still a challenge.

Three-year-old Apple TV+ is part of a broader pivot to subscription, which seeks to leverage the billion iPhone users.

Little impacted by the tech crash, Apple is increasing content spending as most of its rivals cut it.

Apple’s scripted content pitches quality over quantity, stardom over creativity. But the consumer reception has been cool.

Amazon Channels’ aggregation of third-party streaming services enhances the consumer appeal of its wider video proposition, provides incremental revenues and increases the stickiness of the Prime shopping service

Content partners range from major players (e.g. Discovery and ITV) to the more niche (e.g. MUBI and Tastemade), who all benefit from a ready-made platform, billing relationships and a receptive subscriber base. But the revenue shares, data costs and lack of direct customer relationships remain too high a price for some

Two and a half years on from its UK launch, opportunities for live, ad-supported and bundled content are diversifying the platform, but Amazon must prioritise discovery within Prime Video to continue to flourish