DAZN and Sky have renewed their current coverage of Serie A until 2029, at a slightly lower price and with the security of a five-year contract. The ‘league channel’ DTC option was rejected by clubs.
With bids expected soon in France and the UK, DAZN seems determined to become the dominant football broadcaster in Europe.
The Italian auction outcome confirms the real-term erosion of the value of football rights across Europe, but also a more mature approach from the league.
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.
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 Italian football league is auctioning its media rights for up to five seasons from 2024/25, with bids due by 14 June.
As in previous cycles, Sky and DAZN will probably bid below the minimum prices, which could trigger further auctions.
Plans for a league DTC service are unrealistic, and free-to-air broadcasts would be uneconomical.
On 18 May 2023, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2023 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Barclays, Financial Times, and Salesforce
With over 550 attendees and over 40 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives, policy leaders, and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation, and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry
This is the edited transcript of Session One, covering: the future of digital experiences, the streaming economy, and harnessing AI for good. Videos of the presentations will be available on the conference website
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.
DAZN has published its 2021 results, with losses extending to $1.4 billion, a situation that will likely have ameliorated in 2022, as the company looks to breakeven in 2023.
With the Champions League rights renewed in Germany, and crucial distribution deals secured in Italy and Spain, DAZN has a firmer foothold in its three major European markets.
Price increases in major markets and ancillary revenue streams will help stem losses, but achieving break-even by 2023 is still a challenge.
For the media and entertainment industry the dawn of the metaverse, and the word soup of acronyms that accompanies it, is the latest high-profile technology wave that threatens to simultaneously upend established distribution models and reinvent both the experience and the relationship with the audience.
Music is the media sector (outside gaming) that has moved fastest to experiment with metaverse applications, so far mainly on gaming platforms like Fortnite and Roblox, which provide a ready game-centric audience but offer little lasting innovation.
Music's metaverse potential beyond gaming is huge, led by artists who want a more dynamic online presence, though we anticipate a long trajectory towards mainstream applications as questions remain around formats, design, platforms, and monetisation.
DAZN has agreed to buy Eleven Sports, adding two untapped European markets and expanding further into South East Asia in its bid for greater scale
Team Whistle, Eleven’s short-form content production and distribution network, will provide new opportunities for marketing DAZN, especially to younger audiences
Meanwhile, DAZN Bet has soft-launched in the UK—a small first step as it seeks additional monetisation methods for expensive broadcasting rights