US entertainment groups have not been disrupted by the rise of digital media. Long running franchises drive growth across diverse sectors, starting with pay-TV and SVOD. US television advertising is rising in line with GDP, while the online video ad market is flourishing, with much appearing alongside the majors' scripted content

Studios' cable channels are their most profitable assets, but M&As with distribution platforms, including Comcast's aquisition of NBC Universal, have usually failed to deliver synergies

The Donald Trump presidency could leverage hostile public opinion towards mergers to undermine the AT&T bid for Time Warner; but it could also stimulate M&As if it granted tech companies a tax break to repatriate profits. A more protectionist administration could also bring about a less benevolent attitude towards majors' foreign operations

With the decline in its subscriber base accelerating and following an antitrust veto over its planned tie up with BeIN Sports, Canal+ has decided to radically restructure its retailing on IPTV – where over 60% of subscriber recruitment takes place 

The basic channel package is now wholesale to ISPs and included in upper tier triple play bundles – much higher volumes should more than balance a deep price cut. Soon premium and optional packages are to be unbundled on all platforms to create cheaper entry points and favour subscriber customisation

Canal+ is thus increasingly focused on supplying premium content, leaving the user interface to ISPs. Without the scale of other international content producers and in a nationalistic political context, we believe that this market rationale will eventually lead Vivendi to sell Canal+ to Orange

Gaming giant Tencent acquiring Supercell for $8.6bn when rivals are grappling with costs shows the importance of strategic discipline and scale for mobile games success

The games lineup on Sony’s PlayStation4 is pulling ahead of that on rival Microsoft’s Xbox One, testament to a growing lead in console sales and strong relationships with Asian studios

Transitioning to a VR dominated future, Sony is preparing to roll out VR globally in the autumn, while Microsoft pins hopes on a new VR-ready Xbox set to arrive next year

Music publishing revenues are trending up in a broad sustainable manner across the US, Europe and Japan, underpinned by longstanding music rights regimes

Purchasing is down and streaming taking off, driving a mechanical to performance transition, with direct licensing of Anglo-American repertoire in Europe as in the US

Public performance revenues collected by PROs are also rising as live music grows, general business conditions improve, while TV audiences remain resilient

A post-Brexit recession will cause a hyper-cyclical decline in the advertising revenues of broadcasters and publishers

The Vote Leave idea of the UK joining a free trade area for goods with the EU would sever UK access to the Single Market for services, damaging the export-reliant audiovisual group, among many other sectors of strength

Made-in-the-UK IT, software and computer consultancy services will lose eligibility for government procurement tenders once the UK is an outsider to the EU

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference in conjunction with Deloitte, Moelis & Company, Linklaters and LionTree, in London on 8 March 2016. The event featured talks from 22 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette.

This report provides edited transcripts of the talks, and you will find accompanying slides for some of the presentations here.

Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.

In 2014 Canal+’s core premium French pay-TV business has continued to lose subscribers and swallowed a VAT increase. But this was offset by growth in FTA ad sales, in ARPU, in overseas subscriptions and by acquisitions. EBITDA has continued the decline which commenced in 2013

Eleven years ago Canal+ in France and Sky in Britain had the same household penetration, but since then a gap has opened up and now Canal+ lags behind at 21% compared to Sky’s 34%. The French platform suffers from its regulated focus on films and its neglect of hardware

A deep revision of Canal+’s model is needed, through building a library of scripted series and a revamp of the consumer proposition to differentiate on quality and user experience. Building on recent initiatives, mediocre IPTV services should be bypassed by OTT bundles on fibre, and the satellite offering upgraded

As we expected, Canal+ won the broadcast rights to the Ligue 1 top three weekly games in 2016-20 and beIN Sports have the seven remaining fixtures Sensibly, the two competitors avoided a bidding war but ended up paying 28% more than the 2012-16 agreement – the first substantial increase since 2005 The new contract will help Canal+ sustain pricing and marketing. Meanwhile, even if it completely lost the ongoing Champions’ League auction, Canal+’s football prominence would remain

The French Professional Football League (LFP) is to auction its 2016-20 broadcasting rights next month, one year earlier than expected. The anticipated auction (and short notice) increases pressure on rival LFP broadcasters – a failure to renew their existing rights deals would unsettle their position for over two years

Due to uncertainty over the future ownership of Canal+ and the political background of Al Jazeera’s beIN Sports we believe that both would prefer to maintain the status quo: the top two weekly games on Canal+ and the other eight on beIN Sports

The LFP rights are precisely packaged to prevent this, and to force the two to compete at least for one lot. As the market leader Canal+ has more to lose, while beIN Sports could sustain its current complementary positioning with fewer games

Based on the recent announcement by the French Professional Football League, we now expect Canal+ to be awarded the exclusive rights to broadcast Premier League events for the three seasons starting in 2004, for which it offered €480 million. (Rival TPS is challenging the League's approach to the Competition Commission, so the story may yet have an unexpected ending.) These payments will add to an already hefty calendar of payments for Canal+ under the 1999 contract, as a result of which Canal+ is likely to report no or low profits in FY 2002. This note details the aggressive cost cutting and revenue-raising measures that will be needed to achieve a modest level of profitability going forward. By FY 2005, when Canal+ becomes the sole purveyor of Premier League events and payments rise by 60%, the subscriber base will have to be 180,000 higher just to maintain profits at 2004 levels. This seems a challenging target given that Canal+ lost 70,000 subscribers this year. In short, we think that Canal+ may have won the battle for Premier League rights at the price of its profitability in the medium-term.