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.
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
The proposal from DCMS to expand the pre-digital “public interest” regime that requires clearance for changes in the equity stakes in print newspapers to online news publishers lacks a firm rationale in 2024.
A plethora of online sources dilute the influence of news brands and their proprietors over British people’s political views, in particular the platforms (X, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook) hosting self-publishing influencers, politicians and political advertising.
The UK's expanded future regime, if enacted, will further chill the appetite of investors for stakes in commercial media, reduce their value and ability to raise capital, and stifle beneficial consolidation.
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.
UK football rights values have pulled further away from European peers in a stagnant market, as telcos have withdrawn and tech companies remain selective bidders.
Sky and Canal+ have tied down key contracts until towards the end of the decade, while DAZN now has domestic rights for four of the top five European football leagues.
Tech players want live sport, but have distinctive demands and without new monetisation models they will not challenge pay-TV incumbents.
UK news publishers are experimenting with generative AI to realise newsroom efficiencies. Different businesses see a different balance of risk and reward: some eager locals are already using it for newsgathering and content creation, while quality nationals hold back from reader-facing uses.
Publishers must protect the integrity of their content. Beyond hallucinations, overuse of generative AI carries the longer-term commercial and reputational risk of losing what makes a news product distinctive.
Far less certain is the role of generative AI in delivering the holy grail of higher revenues. New product offerings could be more of an opportunity for businesses that rely on subscribers than those that are ad-supported.
The UK’s choice of policy for rebalancing the relationships between news publishers and tech platforms is on the agenda of the CMA’s Digital Markets Unit for 2025. The UK is expected to steer clear of the pitfalls of Canada’s news bargaining regime, which led Meta to block news, crashing referrals.
In the UK, Google’s relationships with news publishers are much deeper than referrals, including advertising and market-specific voluntary arrangements that support a robust supply of journalism, and dovetail with the industry’s focus on technology (including AI) and distribution.
The rise of generative AI has also ignited the news industry’s focus on monetising the use of its content in LLMs. AI products could threaten the prominence, usage and positive public perceptions of journalism—this might require progress in journalism’s online infrastructure, supported by public policy.
After an arduous ten-month process, France’s Ligue 1 has reached a tentative deal to license its 2024-29 broadcasting rights at a price 14% down on the previous cycle.
Adding France (for €400 million p.a.), DAZN now has prominent positions in four out of the five big European markets. With a weekly top pick (for €100m p.a.), beIN consolidates its model.
Attention turns to distribution, and whether DAZN will patch up its partnership with Canal+.