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February 24, 2021Sports rights market hits an inflection point: New distribution p [...]
Focus Report, ReportsThe fire smouldering beneath the traditional sports broadcasting model burst into flame in 2020. We have argued that sports rights payments in the ANZ market were not sustainable. The rising value of deals could not be reconciled with falling broadcast TV revenues. In this report, we discuss the current state of the Australian sports rights market, delve into the current struggle of traditional broadcasters, and contemplate what is next for the delivery of sports content. -
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February 24, 2021Google and Facebook lay out diverging news strategies: Battlegrou [...]
Flash Report, ReportsGoogle is demonstrating support for news by stepping up its efforts to license content from publishers and provide unpaywalled access within its Google News app—an attempt to diffuse regulatory pressure.
Google is reconfiguring its relationships with publishers worldwide, putting $1 billion on the table to license news content to News Showcase through a series of flat fees over a set period of time.
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February 12, 2021Video viewing survey: household consumption across formats to rem [...]
Focus Report, ReportsVenture Insights conducted a video consumer survey in late November/early December 2020 in collaboration with Swinburne University of Technology. The survey was conducted nationally for 1,003 respondents, with a representative survey sample across demographic and regional groupings. Those respondents who watch free to air TV, pay TV, catch-up TV or SVOD services qualified to participate in this survey. -
February 10, 2021The inexorable rise of games: Five themes for 2021
Focus Report, Reports- The games industry enjoyed a robust 2020, with the pandemic creating high demand across titles and platforms. Now a core part of the mainstream media and entertainment ecosystem, games share of entertainment spend and audience viewing time will maintain momentum and increase in 2021
- The demand for, and value of, premium content has migrated to game IP, with top franchises driving increased M&A activity and tighter integration with film and TV output, and providing an important advertising channel
- The pandemic has provided breathing space for the industry on regulatory scrutiny of revenue models, and overall consumer safety. Regulators need to increase their speed in 2021, and act decisively on predatory ‘free-to-play’ game mechanisms
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February 9, 2021Amazon and sports rights: Gaining confidence
Flash Report, Reports- Thanks to lockdown momentum, Amazon Prime Video grew substantially in 2020. Christmas time coverage of the Premier League seems to have played a part, informing Amazon’s approach elsewhere
- Upping its game, Amazon has acquired more expensive Champions League rights in Germany and Italy. It also bid in Monday’s failed French Ligue 1 auction
- In the impending Premier League tender Amazon may be ready to increase its outlay if needed to meet subscribers’ expectations, but without any real incentive to challenge Sky and BT’s dominance
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February 4, 2021Top 5 Media Trends in 2021
Market Outlook, Reports2020 was a disruptive year for everyone, including the media industry. The pressures have exposed industry fault lines and toppling entrenched arrangements. Our top media trends for 2021 are:- SVOD market flattens
- Sports rights shakeout to continue
- We’ve passed “peak platform”
- Programmatic advertising transcends the cookie
- Localism’s last throw
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January 28, 20212021 Video Entertainment Market Outlook
Market Outlook, Reports- We forecast the Australian video market to decline at a 2% CAGR to about A$5.5bn in 2024, driven primarily by the revenue deflation as viewing shifts from traditional to digital platforms.
- COVID-19 has provided a massive boost to SVOD revenues, which will continue to grow at a 9.3% CAGR through to 2024. However, we forecast a significant decline in Pay-TV and Physical media formats.
- Pay-TV will remain under pressure driven by the structural changes in the way video content is consumed. While Foxtel will offset some of this pressure by participating in the SVOD market, it will not be able to recover the losses in its traditional Pay-TV business.
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January 22, 2021Netflix Q4 2020 results: 200 million subs with cash piling up
Flash Report, ReportsNetflix believes that it no longer needs to raise external financing for its day-to-day operations
This has come quicker than expected: the company had previously gone from the opaque “next few years” narrative it held for some time, to “rapidly closing in” on sustainable positive cashflow just last quarter, meaning that it was a “couple” of years off. One quarter later Netflix is confident its free cash flow will break even in 2021, up $1 billion on its prediction three months ago. -
January 11, 2021(UK) Montgomery shakes news market again: JPI, third largest loca [...]
Flash Report, ReportsThe low price paid reflects the dismal prospects for print media, especially regional and local titles relative to national titles. Over the past decade, regional publications were affected at a greater rate than national counterparts by the structural decline of print circulation and advertising, resulting in significantly more closures, as well as issue frequency reductions. -
January 11, 2021Serie A TV rights auction: Deflation looms
Flash Report, ReportsOn Monday, Italy’s Serie A issued its call for tender for its broadcasting rights for the 2021-24 cycle, covering three seasons. Bids are due by 26 January. Currently, Sky holds exclusive coverage of seven games per week with the remaining three fixtures carried by DAZN. -
January 8, 2021Football rights economics: Low broadcasting competition underpins [...]
Focus Report, Reports- Beyond the short-term impact of the COVID crisis, the value of football rights in Europe is heading down
- Lower competitive intensity in the broadcasting market is the main reason, and looks unlikely to be reversed
- The leagues must consider long-term initiatives to broaden demand—cash fixes risk worsening their structural problems
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December 16, 2020Taking Free-to-Air TV online in Australia: opportunities and chal [...]
Focus Report, ReportsThe report is designed to enumerate the key technical, commercial and equity issues that would arise in the course of such a migration, providing insights and identifying problems that would need to be addressed. Amongst other things, this requires an examination of Australia’s digital infrastructure and its capacity to support television distribution, the media and telecommunications business models that would need to be adapted, and the response of households to the changes in consumer technology that would be required. A household survey was also undertaken to inform this report, and details are included in the Appendix. The report is not a proposal that free-to-air television should entirely move to online delivery, nor is it a strategy to get there. Nor is it a cost-benefit analysis. -
December 15, 2020Amazon Prime on Sky Q: Now almost fully aggregated
Flash Report, ReportsSky has agreed to host Amazon Prime Video on its platform, effective today. The Amazon app appears in the App section of Sky Q set-top-boxes, which in the UK places it alongside the existing icons of BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Discovery+, Disney+, YouTube and Spotify (it is currently third in prominence). -
December 3, 2020Australia Out-of-Home Market Outlook Report
Market Outlook, ReportsThe Australian Out-of-Home (OOH) market had been growing continuously until it was hit by COVID in 2020. The market grew at 9% CAGR in the 8 years to FY19 as digital revenues took off but declined by 18% YoY in FY20. -
November 18, 2020ITV Q3 2020 results: Ads recovering, production may take longer
Flash Report, ReportsAdvertising demand has risen, with total ad revenue down just 7% in Q3, and Q4 expected to be slightly up—this means ITV will be down just over 10% across 2020.
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November 17, 2020Sky UK brings group back on track
Flash Report, ReportsSky appears to have weathered the COVID-19 crisis, revealing an encouraging turnaround in its Q3 operating results, with revenue growth flat overall as each stream saw significant improvement from Q2
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November 13, 2020
Virgin Media: Subscriber growth renaissance continues
Flash Report, ReportsVirgin Media’s lockdown subscriber surge continued into Q3, as working-from-home highlights the importance of the faster speeds its network can offer.
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November 11, 20202020 console launches Xbox looks to the future; PlayStation looks [...]
Flash Report, ReportsThe launch of new games consoles this week showcases broadly divergent strategies for Sony and Microsoft, with market leader PlayStation focused solely on defending its model against the rising tide of cheaper subscription games services. -
November 4, 2020Channel 4 2019, 2020 and beyond
Flash Report, ReportsChannel 4’s 2019 results were solid but unsurprisingly, greater interest is in how the broadcaster has fared in 2020, and what this might mean for its future -
October 29, 2020Australia Radio Market Outlook: Radio is secure for now, but comp [...]
Market Outlook, ReportsWe forecast Australian radio industry advertising revenue to grow at 4.2% CAGR over FY20-24, but it faces a gradual decline in its share of total advertising expenditure share (6.5% in FY20 vs 5.9% in FY24). -
October 26, 2020Netflix Q3 2020 results: Returning to pre-COVID levels
Flash Report, ReportsNetflix’s usage and churn are “back to what they were a year ago”, while subscriber growth was down (+2.2 million globally) Two levers contributed to Netflix’s recent explosive growth, adding 26 million subscribers in the first half of the year: the pull-forward effect of the pandemic that saw future subs coming to the service early, and the drop in churn as those intending to leave hung about as there was nothing else to do except watch TV. -
October 19, 2020Mediapro stops payments for French football: An opportunity for C [...]
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September 24, 2020Australian Advertising Market Outlook 2020: COVID-19 impact will [...]
Market Outlook, ReportsThe story of the year is obviously the impact of COVID 19 and the associated economic slowdown. The -6.8% decline in FY20 AdEx will, among other things, hasten the trend to digital advertising. -
August 31, 2020Nine, Seven results: COVID impact disguises accelerating FTA reve [...]
Focus Report, ReportsAs we have said previously, the FTA advertising revenue market faces major structural headwinds as audiences transition away from linear television. Both Seven and Nine reported declines in their core FTA advertising businesses in FY19 and FY20. The decline in linear FTA advertising revenue in 1H20, before COVID-19 hit, was 7% YoY. This was an acceleration of the decline compared to FY19, but the effect was of course swamped by the impact of COVID-19 in the second half. As expected, COVID-19 had a disruptive and negative impact, particularly in Q4. This is reflected in the FY20 revenue results, but will flow through into FY21 because the longer-term economic impacts of COVID-19 shutdowns have yet to be felt. To counter this trend and the one-off impact of COVID-19, Seven and Nine are managing the decline of the FTA market by following through with their investments in digital platforms (BVOD), improving yields on existing content, developing programmatic and addressable TV solutions, and cutting costs. SevenWest and Nine were also able to make gains in cost reduction and new revenue growth that kept them in the black. These green shoots give some hope for a digital rebound in the wake of the COVID-19 disruption. However, it will be several years before BVOD is enough to significantly offset FTA declines.Sector Media.
