The Premier League has launched its first competitive rights auction since 2018, offering broadcasters a longer four-year cycle and 70 more live games.

Sky could reduce costs by cutting down on one weekly slot, but we expect it to fight for four packages, consistent with its history of prioritising the prominence of its Premier League coverage.

Competitive tension may be the strongest between TNT Sports and DAZN.

Warner Bros. Discovery is grappling with declining legacy cable revenues and its $48 billion debt burden. DTC losses have attenuated but de-leveraging will be trickier post-2023 as many of the easier cost-savings have been achieved.

The US launch of its DTC offering, Max, attempts to dovetail IP from across Warner Bros., alongside Discovery's food, lifestyle and documentary programming, and soon, CNN. Adding sports may prove more challenging.

In Europe, WBD’s rational strategy would be to maintain a mixed distribution strategy, agreeing exclusive deals for its DTC platform with incumbent aggregators such as Sky.

BT got its financial year off to a strong start in Q1, with Group revenue and EBITDA growth of 4%/5% both well on track to hit guidance of merely 'growth'.

Price rises across broadband, mobile and Openreach all landed well, driving strong ARPU growth of 5%/9%/10% respectively, but subscriber growth was likely weak, mainly reflecting a tough environment.

Growth is set to wane across the year as consumer price rise boosts start to re-contract out, leaving Openreach as the main growth driver for as long as the economic environment remains challenging.

Vodafone's headline revenue growth of +3.7% is actually a small decline once Rest of World exchange depreciation is accounted for. Europe, however, delivered an improving revenue trend to +0.4%, as signalled at Vodafone's FY results announcement.

The mix and operating trends are less positive, with growth driven by low-margin B2B, and subscriber losses accelerating in German fixed. Investors will be weighing up whether these results are green shoots of a recovery or another false dawn.

Although the company may reach its guided EBITDA on assumed exchange rates, it looks set to fall short in euro terms, which has implications for FCF and dividend cover.

Social tariffs have provided relief for some at a time of household income squeeze and otherwise unavoidable high inflation-driven telco price increases.

Adoption has risen but remains very low, limiting their effectiveness, and more widespread adoption would expose their shortcomings, with the risk of penalizing low cost operators and significantly increasing prices for non-adopters (by up to 20%).

A better approach might be to recognize that affordability issues are narrower but deeper than current social tariffs can address, with fuller, centrally funded subsidies targeted more narrowly at those most in need.

BT hit all its targets for the 2022/23 financial year, ending the year with a (predicted) consumer service revenue growth slowdown but a surprisingly strong B2B performance fully compensating.

Investors were disappointed in the outlook for cashflow in 2023/24, with tax benefits being absorbed by the cost of faster-than-expected full fibre adoption, ignoring that this is good news rather than bad.

Next quarter the company will get a substantial boost from the price rises, and in the longer term an even more substantial boost from the completion of the full fibre build is looking increasingly secure.

The games industry, with the potential to become the world’s largest media and entertainment sector by revenue, is undergoing profound transformation.

The consolidation of major developers is a response to a revenue model pivoting toward subscription, with direct consequences for those already in the subscription space: film, TV and music.

A technology-led creative medium, with an audience approaching three billion gamers, is seeing its franchises become more valuable and useful than ever.

UK news publishers have rushed to distribute content on TikTok. They are drawn by its enormous young audience, but poor monetisation and data sharing, a lack of referrals to their own sites, and data security concerns are frustrating a full embrace of the platform.

TikTok is increasingly identified as a ‘news source’ by young people: a risk to publishers distributing content on the platform is that their brands may get lost in user feeds.

Publishers should view activity on TikTok as a strategic cost instead of a revenue source: an investment in brand awareness, and development in content and delivery formats that are becoming more widespread across platforms. Brand visibility is key to success here.

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.

BT’s revenue and EBITDA growth fell in the December quarter, with consumer broadband in particular suffering from weakening volumes and ARPU, as last year’s price rise benefit wanes and broader macro pressures hit.

Openreach, however, had an improved quarter, with the broadband market returning to growth, full fibre build and take-up progressing at or ahead of expectations, and the altnet threat fairly subdued.

Inflationary price rises in April will give a temporary fillip, and likely help drive a decent 2023/24 for Group financials, but it will take much longer for full fibre benefits to really be felt.