Two-year-old Temu is mounting a serious challenge to Amazon's 20-year-old Prime value proposition. Temu's extreme low prices at the cost of speed threaten to erode consumer perceptions of Prime's value and convenience.

US tariffs and de minimis changes make the UK more attractive as a destination. Greater competition for sales and advertising will continue in the near term as the platforms adjust.

Temu and Amazon spent billions on ads in the UK in 2024 in the battle for buyers and sellers. Smaller brands and retailers may need to boost brand advertising to fend off the platforms.

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 United States’ America First policy rebalances the terms of trade with allies and the UK aims to secure an exemption to restore the status quo ante on tariffs

The UK is offering a deal to the United States on digital services sold in the UK that seems easier than a deal on US food products that do not meet UK regulations

The UK will have to give on the Digital Services Tax (DST) of 2% on “digital services revenues” (applied to Amazon, Apple, eBay, Meta, and Google) and soften the regulations and enforcement of Acts of Parliament  

Netflix beat its own Q1 revenue and profit forecasts but an uneven outlook means that its previous 2025 projections (12-14% revenue growth with a 29% margin) remain relevant. The end of reporting of subscription numbers and ARPU means that there is less visibility on the success of advertising and its regions

UK programming is now the most efficient original content on Netflix—with a tough outlook for production, this is validation of the quality of the product produced in this country

The call for a streaming levy was badly timed with little interrogation of any consequences. Further, it fails to directly address a major problem: the declining consumption of British programming  

UEFA and Relevent, a newly appointed media rights sales partner, are already surveying the rights market for the next cycle starting in 2027.

With minimal competitive tension in major European markets, incumbent broadcasters are unlikely to increase their bids.

Relevent will, however, try to leverage increased US appetite for soccer to lure a streamer into a global deal.

The USA is reshaping the global economic order in defiance of trade treaties; however, the rest of the world is observing trade treaties and absorbing the shock of the tariff wall erected around the US market.

The UK is relatively spared among the 90 origins hit by the USA's tariffs on imports of goods, which do not apply to services' exports to the US, twice the value of goods, including media (e.g. TV programmes) and advertising services.

The timing of the deteriorating global outlook is poor due to the headwinds facing the UK economy that are impairing the recovery of advertising in 2025.

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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.

Globally, subscriber growth remains the driver of topline streaming improvements—86% of Netflix’s 2024 global revenue growth came from subscriber additions, with 85% for WBD and 54% for Disney

However, in mature markets growth is underpinned by ARPU. Subs growth is becoming volatile with more customers churning in and out of services around key releases

Relevantly, the race to scale up SVOD ad-tiers will continue to have an ARPU-dilutive effect: CPMs are lower than expected and the growing price divide between premium and ad tiers will persuade more existing users to spin down 

AI agents capable of complex, self-directed tasks are becoming a reality, with capabilities set to improve dramatically through this year, and diffuse widely.

Consumer agent uptake will be hard to time, but fast when it occurs. Enterprise adoption will happen slower but with greater inevitability, as agents offer strong productivity gains across many business functions.

TMT firms should be able to capitalise on much of these potential cost savings, but are exposed to a number of specific risks around agents acting as new digital middlemen, disintermediating traditional web ecosystems within advertising and ecommerce.

Despite the success and popularity of Amazon’s Echo, the rationale for this device in Amazon’s ecosystem has been unclear—until now.

The introduction of Alexa+ to Echo devices—enhanced with generative AI which improves its voice user-interface—aims to change this.

Alexa+ is designed to increase Prime lock-in, and enables Amazon to differentiate its devices and operating systems.