Ligue 1 wants to break with its recent history of failed tenders, declining revenues and soured relations with incumbent Canal+.

This year’s would-be bidders have no history of inflating rights costs. Thanks to its distribution deals with DAZN (likely to step in) and beIN, Canal+ may feel secure, while Amazon could let its coverage shrink to a selection of key matches.

The LFP is taking steps to offer a more enticing competition, in partnership with CVC: with fewer teams, a stronger brand and new investors.

The Nordic pay-TV group is under severe financial stress after its stock crashed, dropping its market cap to just over 9% of its 2021 peak value, on top of increasing and unsustainable losses and debt.

Viaplay announced a full U-turn on its previous approach driven by international sports rights and Nordic noir series.

Following the results, Vivendi’s Canal+ bought a 12% stake, eyeing Viaplay's still healthy Nordic business and consolidation in Poland.

Piracy of live video feeds—chiefly sports—is growing due to illegal subscription ‘IPTV’ services delivered to TV sets.

Consumers discover illegal feeds through search engines and social media, and subscribe through global payment systems.

Anti-piracy activity is focused on feed disruption. There is little attention paid to credit card and online payment facilitators who need to do more.

We forecast broadcaster viewing to shrink to below half of total video viewing by 2028 (48%)—down from 64% today—as streaming services gain share of long-form viewing time.

On the key advertising battleground of the TV set, broadcasters will still retain scale with a 63% viewing share by 2028, even as SVOD and YouTube double their impact.

Short-form video will continue to displace long-form as video-first apps (e.g. YouTube, Twitch, TikTok) gain further popularity and others (e.g. Facebook, Instagram) continue a relentless pivot to video. This will expand the amount of video watched and transition habits—even amongst older demographics.

Recorded music streaming revenues rose 11% in 2022 and we estimate Spotify’s contribution at 1/3—Spotify added 25 million Premium Subscribers in 2022, growing its recording and publishing payouts to the music industry to $8-9 billion.

Spotify’s Loud & Clear resource shows that the long tail of artists generating royalties between $1,000 and $10,000, of which many are self-distributing, rose 16% to 175,500—75% of all those generating over $1,000.

Spotify’s open platform for uploads grew the long tail to over 100 million tracks in 2022. Major labels are seeking to change the pro rata royalty payout model on Premium to address the siphoning of royalties by fake music, clips and bots—a looming threat to creators is AI-generated music.

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.

Spotify’s strategy to invest massively in podcasts weighed on its costs and chewed up its operating profits, a bad combination that led CEO Daniel Ek to admit he 'got a little carried away'.

Spotify's podcast investment did not deliver the benefit of reduced music licensing costs on the premium tier.

Podcast investments in North America have not materially altered Spotify's slower post-pandemic subscriber growth in that geography, and do not travel outside their home country as readily as music.

In a transformative upgrade of its content subscription offering, Google is buying the rights to live Sunday NFL games for $2 billion per year for 2023-2031.

YouTube can leverage its massive reach to challenge existing video aggregators, including pay-TV platforms and Amazon, as a gatekeeper to consumers.

Google will likely deploy a similar strategy in Europe, eventually competing with Sky, Canal+ and other incumbents—a hopeful development for football leagues.

The digital transition is almost complete in France, five years after the launch of DTT. After undergoing an audience share decline, TF1's share is stabilising. In contrast, M6 improved its audience share during the transition. Both groups are likely to remain dominant in the FTA TV market, thanks to the partial withdrawal of public TV from advertising sales

The advertising recovery in 2010 was strong. Thanks to its diversification, M6 is less exposed to the cycle than TF1, which is rebounding more strongly. M6 is also structurally more profitable

Pay-TV platform growth has stalled, with subscription decline at Canal+ somewhat balanced by growth of low cost packages of IPTV providers. Canal+ will benefit from the withdrawal of Orange from premium TV and a new distribution deal with Orange. Combined with the roll out of new set-tops with PVRs, we are moderately optimistic on Canal+ prospects

Vivendi is close to being in a cash position to buy out minority shareholdings in SFR and Canal+, shedding the image of a ‘conglomerate’ of partly owned and diverse assets, which has weighed on valuation Acquiring Vodafone’s 44% stake in SFR (now only a question of price) would allow Vivendi to rebrand itself as a telecoms story, serving France, with Maroc Télécom and mainly Brazil’s GVT supplying the upside To fully acquire Canal+, Vivendi’s offer will need to consider Lagardère’s option of floating its 20% stake. Owning 100% of Canal+ and SFR opens the narrative of a ‘French media/telecoms champion’ – which we find less credible