Industrial scale theft of video services, especially live sport, is in the ascendance. Combating piracy is a formidable challenge, providing a direct threat to profitability for broadcasters and streamers.

Big tech is both friend and foe in solving the piracy problem. Conflicting incentives harm consumer safety by providing easy discovery of illegal pirated services, and reduced friction through low-cost hardware such as the Amazon Firestick.

Over twenty years since launch, the DRM solutions provided by Google and Microsoft are in steep decline. A complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model is needed. Lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority.

US tariffs and regulations are sparing no one in 2025—Microsoft, the ‘winner’ of the earnings quarter, is still making plans to protect its European business in a doomsday scenario.

Hyperscalers who have piled their eggs into cloud cannot afford a misstep—this is driving record capex to satisfy cloud demand. We expect to see lumpiness in Q2-Q3, feeding investors’ worries.

Revenue impacts have been felt first at US retail, softening ad demand, with the UK relatively protected for now. Despite relief at the 90-day ‘reset’ with China, economic and political uncertainty remains the story of the year.

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  

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.

US big tech companies are deploying hundreds of billions of dollars to remake the global economy in their image, as enviable growth contrasts with layoffs and low morale.

The cost of using AI models will fall in 2025 and make more AI applications possible. Regulation is caught between pressure from Trump and investigations that must go on, such as digital markets.

Microsoft and Google have tied their fortunes to AI. Amazon and Meta stand to realise business gains from AI, while Apple is the outlier: capex declined in 2024 as it focuses on iPhone and services.

Broadcaster reach and viewing fell in 2024, but the decline slowed as BVOD growth increasingly makes up for linear decline and the BBC’s viewing grew year-on-year. 

SVOD penetration and engagement returned to (slight) growth in 2024 and video-sharing platforms are increasing their share of TV set viewing.

Broadcasters still offer a wider array of programming than SVODs, but they are expanding their offering, as is YouTube.

Global streamers have expanded their US premium sports coverage, but this will be difficult to replicate in Europe.

The main obstacle is much lower advertising revenues in European sport.

The concentration of European football rights and small pools of buyers mean that premium sports must be retailed on an opt-in basis.

Use of publisher content to train AI models is hotly contested. Unacknowledged scraping, licensing deals, and lawsuits all characterise the publisher-AI company relationship.

However, model training is not the whole story. More and more products rely on up-to-date access to content, and some are direct competitors to publisher offerings.

Publishers can’t depend on copyright to deliver them the value of their IP. They need to track which products are catching on with users for licensing deals to make sense for them, and to ensure their own products keep up with the competition.