After four failed broadcast licence deals over five years, France’s top football league will launch its own subscription service in August.
In the short-term, consumer take up will critically depend on bundling arrangements with third-party platforms.
Longer-term, the league will need to establish lasting partnerships. Outdated competition rules are an obstacle, but the Dutch model is worth considering.
Defined roles within the advertising ecosystem are a thing of the past: everyone is adapting by building out functionality to claim share as the constants underpinning advertising—attribution, discoverability, and regulation—change.
There is a new wave of M&A, partnerships and developments from agencies, adtech, and big tech in data and AI, as all sides position themselves to reshape the terms of online advertising at a time of maximum uncertainty.
Big tech platforms are leveraging their scale and AI investments in attempts to reset broad swathes of the market. Publishers are exposed; their way forward relies on asserting their value through direct audiences and collaboration on sector-wide innovations
As Ligue 1 seeks yet another broadcast arrangement for next season, the French league’s value is expected to erode further.
Outside the UK, the value of major leagues’ live rights are trending downwards. The Champions League—now sold by Relevent—is the silver lining, seeking to sign up a streamer.
Global streaming platforms have a growing appetite for sports rights—but European leagues need patience.
The French league and DAZN have come to an agreement to end their media rights contract after one season, with the league now having had four main broadcast partners in five years.
DAZN claims the league failed to protect its ‘exclusivity’, resulting in high piracy. Ligue 1 blames poor execution.
Without a main broadcast partner for next season, Ligue 1 is exploring the idea of creating its own direct-to-consumer service.
The erosion of the website’s centrality, and the rise of creators and influencers generates multiple challenges for media –people’s choices have grown enormously. This report highlights consumer behaviour: what people trust and value.
Through a series of case studies we demonstrate people’s needs are resilient: helpful and convenient services with personality that can be trusted, all enhanced by strong community.
Media brands continue to play a critical and trusted role for people to navigate marketplaces, interests and their work life. The role of product –and by extension, the leadership and structure of product development –has grown in importance.
This report is free to access
Trump II is already proving to be a more serious threat to an independent, robust news media than Trump I.
Trump’s direct power around news media is limited, but the threat comes from an unprecedented politicisation of federal regulators, enforcement and procurement—to favour friends and punish enemies.
Opposition to Trump II is weaker and more divided than the broad ‘resistance’ to Trump I. Big tech companies are going for a close embrace, hoping to steer policy to their advantage—while others bend the knee to avoid punishment.
Use of publisher content to train AI models is hotly contested. Unacknowledged scraping, licensing deals, and lawsuits all characterise the publisher-AI company relationship.
However, model training is not the whole story. More and more products rely on up-to-date access to content, and some are direct competitors to publisher offerings.
Publishers can’t depend on copyright to deliver them the value of their IP. They need to track which products are catching on with users for licensing deals to make sense for them, and to ensure their own products keep up with the competition.
Classified advertising is estimated to have grown circa 7% in the UK in 2024, and forecast to grow 4% in 2025. Specialist platforms own these marketplaces, with both consumer and industry network effects the driving force behind platform strength
Online platforms are gradually becoming vertical-specific search providers, with dominant players Rightmove and Auto Trader looking for further growth through integrations up and down their respective value chains
The properties vertical is bouncing back as buyers adjust to ‘higher for longer’ interest rates, while recruitment sees ongoing polarisation amidst ongoing uptake of employer-facing AI. Autos, insulated from interest rates, grapples with the looming sector shift of EV quotas
Canal+ is listing in London amid earnings and revenue growth and having shown a capacity to partner with global streamers in its core markets.
Investment in local 'tentpole' content—films, series and sports—ensures Canal+’s appeal to consumers and attractiveness to aggregation partners.
Significant growth and synergy opportunities lie in the turnaround of MultiChoice (in Africa), Viaplay (in Scandinavia) and Viu (in South-East Asia).
Under financial stress, most streaming platforms are increasingly focusing on third-party distribution. Thanks to bundling, top streamers like Netflix can increase the lifetime value of subscribers, while smaller streamers widen their reach.
Bundles of streamers may have some potential in the US, but in Europe—with Netflix not interested—they do not have the necessary scale.
This trend towards bundling favours incumbent pay-TV aggregators like Sky and Canal+, but in the longer run they face competition from tech video marketplaces.