Sport TV Rights Inflation

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

Over the last few months, there has been some debate concerning the decline of live TV sports rights values in Europe. According to Jérôme Valcke, FIFA General Secretary, Europe is becoming an increasingly difficult market for the sale of TV rights. While half of FIFA’s TV revenue used to come from Europe, Valcke estimates that up to 70% will be sourced from the rest of the world soon, with Asia and South America now the areas that are promising growth.

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UK indie film – proud to be the 51st state?

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

2011 was a stellar year for the UK, and especially for indie film, with UK independent films enjoying their best year for more than a decade, taking 13.5% of the UK box office. However, recent growth in UK indie’s share of UK box office may have been at the expense of other, overseas indies, rather than the US studios themselves, for whom the UK remains largely a centre for offshoring. In the last 20 years, we’ve had a strike rate of six truly globally successful break out hits, out of a total of just over 2,600 films produced, and that’s not including the nearly 2,400 micro budget films.

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Seconds away, Round Three

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

The gloves are well and truly off in the first major skirmish between organisations vying to control large proportions of UK entertainment and media spend in the web 2.0 era. In the blue corner, the heavyweight Sky Movies, with first pay TV window[1] deals with each of the six major studios[2]. And up until recently, standing proudly alone in the red corner, the relative newcomer backed by dot.com giant Amazon, Lovefilm. But 2012 has seen another contender sidle into the red corner, and with the arrival of Netflix in Europe – first stop, UK & Ireland – a previously predictable contest, a slugfest between Sky Movies and Lovefilm, is starting to hot up. The gloves are off, but what happens next?

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Social Television: A bubble within a bubble?

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Facebook’s hotly anticipated flotation is finally in the pipeline for this spring. The biggest tech IPO to date, twice the size of Google’s, will see investors wary about Facebook’s capacity to transform itself from the darling of the free internet to an efficient profit maximising advertising medium.

While Facebook may get most of the attention at the tip of a new new media investment bubble, a bubble within the bubble has grown around social television, supposedly the latest in a long line of next big social media innovations.

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A Question for Ofcom (and Leveson) – Does the Internet Increase News Plurality – Maybe Not?

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

In promoting consumer choice are we actually fragmenting the revenues that a more consolidated industry could use to fund more extensive, more in-depth coverage, without actually gaining the plurality that we crave?

To get an answer to whether the internet increases news plurality Ofcom (in its current study of the issue for the Secretary of State) needs to look at the news supply chain and the quality/investment in news provision not simply the headline number of providers or the headline number of different named news services used.

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