The Premier League has succeeded in obtaining a 4.4% increase in live televised rights payments from £1,706 million to £1,782 million for the next three year contract commencing with the 2010/11 football season

The big surprise was that Sky bid more than last time round (by an estimated factor of circa 7.5% for its current four packages), while Setanta bid roughly 20% less for its two packages, thereby losing one to Sky

The highly contrasting bidding approaches appear to reflect completely different mindsets, with the not yet viable Setanta focused on the economic value of the PL rights, and Sky taken up with demonstrating long-term commitment to the PL

The essential conclusion of Ofcom’s Second Public Service Broadcasting Review is that the present commercial PSB model is unsustainable in the digital age. The Ofcom solution of fixing on Channel 4 as the “alternative, commercial PSB voice”, while freeing up the Channel 3 and 5 licensees from most of their PSB obligations, still leaves a major funding gap

A particularly attractive solution is some kind of synergy-generating merger/JV/partnership, but difficult to achieve in practice. The attached note examines the main issues that we may expect to arise with the existing proposals

Kangaroo – the proposed BBC Worldwide/ITV/Channel 4 video-on-demand (VOD) service – has been terminated by the Competition Commission (CC) due to fears that it could control the wholesale and retail supply of UK TV VOD

In our view the CC decision is a lucky escape for all three shareholders since it will save them from investing potentially tens of millions in an ill-advised venture which could have become a bottomless money pit when they can least afford it

Near term ITV and Channel 4 will refocus their internet strategies around their own portals and online syndication deals, but these are unlikely to deliver significant revenue; Marquee – the BBC’s proposition to open up iPlayer to other PSB broadcasters – could help, with the advantage of being very low cost

Vodafone’s December quarter KPIs showed only slightly worse underlying European revenue growth compared to last quarter, with another plummet in growth in Spain moderated by improving figures in Germany

In the context of GDP growth across its markets being considerably worse, this is a relatively good performance, with its market share loss likely to prove less severe than last quarter

However, its growth is still very substantially worse than earlier in the year, even compared to GDP, and with GDP declines set to worsen through 2009, and termination rate cuts to bite again in the second half of 2009, growth is likely to decline further

This presentation on Next Generation Access in Sweden is the fourth of our reports on NGA in the Continent, after France, The Netherlands and Germany

Announced in March 2008, incumbent TeliaSonera plans to supply between 1.5 and 2 million FTTH or FTTB+VDSL connections to offer very high speed broadband access and HDTV in multiroom via its ISP brand. In our view, Telia’s strategic rationale on NGA, in the context of declining fixed line revenues, is mainly to develop the IPTV proposition to better counter the competitive challenge of cable operator ComHem, the country’s leading TV provider, on broadband and telephony

Telia also hopes to undermine the proliferation of small scale local open access FTTx networks, which allow competitor ISPs to bypass Telia’s wholesale last-mile access products. Such local networks, together with FTTx operator Bredbandsbolaget (B2), have given Sweden the largest number of FTTx connections in Europe, about one in five residential connections

On next generation access, the interim Digital Britain report has little new to say, but leaves the door open to using public money to help implement it. We think the chance of this happening as part of a ‘deal’ with fixed network operators has increased

On mobile spectrum, the report instructs the mobile operators to agree between themselves a solution to the most contentious issue, 2G spectrum redistribution, or face a solution being imposed. We doubt they will agree, leaving the government to decide and enforce a way forward

On universal broadband, the government is aiming for a 2 Mbit/s commitment. It is early days, but we expect a hybrid wireline/wireless solution, paid for by a combination of government funding, and/or a levy on industry players based on share of industry revenue, which we expect will be fiercely resisted

Strong Q2 results announced on Wednesday 28th January 2009 provided no evidence of negative impact so far due to the current recession

Sky+ HD looks set to provide a major growth opportunity, especially with the Sky+ HD box prices now dropping to £49. That and another record quarter for Sky+ take-up strengthens the view that Sky will meet its target of 10 million pay-TV subscribers by the end of 2010 with room to spare

Fixed line results again displayed relatively strong subscriber growth in an increasingly difficult market, but the operating loss excluding Easynet continued to deepen. Original standalone IRR guidance for fixed line looks unlikely to be met without further price increases

The CC determination on mobile termination rates (MTRs), if implemented, would result in a cumulative 4% reduction in UK mobile industry revenue and EBITDA by the 2010/11 financial year, but a small boost to fixed line industry EBITDA

However, even this cut does not make up for the termination rate cut ‘holiday’ that the UK mobile industry has been enjoying for the last 2-3 years, with MTRs still high in relation to retail tariffs by historic standards

On the positive side (for the MNOs), this means that increased competitive pricing pressure is unlikely in the short term; on the negative side we still expect substantial further cuts from April 2011. These cuts are broadly lagging those in the rest of Europe, so there is no negative read-across for most European MNOs

DMGT has sold a 75% stake in its London title, the Evening Standard, to Russian investor Alexander Lebedev for £15 million

The deal helps DMGT reduce its losses at the title, thought to be up to £20 million a year

While the sale also underlines the publisher’s commitment to reducing its reliance on volatile newspaper assets, we think it highly unlikely that the crown jewels – the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday – will come to market, although the story could be different for regional division Northcliffe

BT’s latest trading update involved a massive £340 million one-off charge to reflect a more cautious view of contract profitability and realign reported performance with cash flow; in addition reported GS EBITDA for the quarter to December is expected to be negligible

There will be little visibility of improved performance at GS until the various ongoing reviews of the business are completed, with a further charge related to one or more NHS contracts the most likely outcome

Performance at the rest of BT group is continuing to be relatively resilient, and price changes at BT Retail and Openreach should help to an extent. But GS looks likely to prove a major drag on group performance well into 2010