It's that time of year again and we've dusted off the crystal ball for a penetrating look into the next 12 months in the technology and media sectors. We tried ChatGPT, which predictably mentioned AI a few times, so here's a look not only at AI but also a few other developments that might hit the ground in 2025.
Too much information
Content overload (in part due to AI-generated content flooding social feeds), has strained consumer trust. According to Accenture's Life Trends 2025, 62% of consumers say that trust is an important factor in choosing to engage with a brand, increasing from 56% in 2023. Concern over algorithmic bias, deepfakes, and bad actors leaves almost 60% of consumers doubting online authenticity, with 38% of consumers encountering fake product reviews in 2024 (although the UK's Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act does seek to tackle this issue). So, many brands currently have a fractious relationship with their audience and 2025 will see them struggle to find ways to cut through the noise and distrust.
According to Dentsu's Year of Impact Media Trends, storytelling is becoming the best strategy for brands trying to reach their audience and burst the algorithmic bubble, in part through leveraging the credibility and authority of fandoms and creators. Dentsu predicts growth in the power of niches – with increasing brand impact available in deep fandoms and hyper-segmented audiences. As the report notes, it is now possible to find sizable and engaged communities for almost any topic or product, no matter how geeky, and some of the audiences are vast. For example, Xianyu is a Chinese second hand product app where sellers share often lengthy and personal stories about the products they offer for sale, and with 500 million monthly active users, this has become a new literary genre in its own right: Xianyu Literature. As this example illustrates, it's not just the story that matters, it's also the storyteller, and many individual influencers and content creators have seen their profiles skyrocket – in the US Gen Z shoppers are twice as likely to make a purchase from an influencer than older generations. 2025 is likely to see brands rely more heavily on influencers and star creators to reach their audience, with 82% of CMOs intending to maintain or increase spending on influencer marketing, leveraging the creator economy.
Content is king, but Sport is the emperor
As Dentsu notes, "original content attracts viewers to streaming platforms, but licensed content makes them stay", giving the example of Suits, that stopped airing in 2019, driving more than 1.5 billion viewed hours, compared to Netflix original One Piece which generated a mere 72 million in the same period. However, live sport dwarfs both, and presents additional ways to drive engagement and revenue, with natural breaks in gameplay providing ideal opportunities for advertising integrations.
This is against a decline in broadcast audiences - according to The Guardian, broadcast TV figures have dropped by 26% since 2015, however over the same period sport has fallen just 3%. Indeed, according to Enders Analysis:
- live sport is the most resilient component of broadcast TV, with viewing almost flat as other genres suffer steep declines
- football has extended its lead as the most watched sport, amid record Premier League audiences (and commands more viewers than the next nine sports combined), and
- the reach of sport on pay-TV has remained strong despite consumer spend pressures, further reducing free-to-air’s share of sports viewing.
According to Enders, younger viewers consume nearly half of their sports content through Sky, “dwarfing the combined efforts of the BBC and ITV, which refutes the widely held view that young people don’t watch sport behind a paywall". It is no surprise therefore that pay TV streaming giants continue to place big bets on live sport for coverage into 2025 and beyond. Netflix recently continued its journey into live sports broadcasting with an announcement that it will show two NFL matches on Christmas Day, and the English Premier League (EPL)'s latest deal (late 2023) with Sky and TNT is worth £6.7bn ($8.4bn).
A game of two halves
However, even though the EPL deal is the largest sports media rights deal ever concluded in the UK, and is double the value of domestic rights in each of Germany, Spain and Italy, it belies an underlying slowdown in growth. It's a four year deal, as opposed to three previously. It also covers 99 games more than the previous deal. Amazon Prime (currently showing 20 matches per season) reportedly did not bid. The deal provides the EPL with £1.675bn a year, less than the £1.713bn a year in the 2015 agreement that covered the 2016-2019 seasons, and on some calculations, factoring in inflation, represents a 50% drop on revenue per-game. So, assuming football is not becoming inherently less popular, and even though as a source of content it retains robust viewing figures against a declining broadcast sector, its rights may have been previously over-priced.
What do the rights holders do to address this declining revenue? Obvious answers, as for any business, are to (1) find a new source of revenue, and/or (2) take greater control of the supply chain to lower the cost of delivering the underlying product. This is where a recent meeting of the 20 Premier League Clubs is interesting. According to CITY AM, the 20 clubs, putting their grievances against one another over associated party transactions aside, voted unanimously to end the League's 20-year partnership with IMG, which creates and distributes the match content to international broadcast partners in 189 markets outside the UK. This effectively brings all production and distribution of content for international markets in-house from 2026. This is significant as it could, in the words of many commentators, lead the Premier League to launch its own direct-to-consumer streaming platform, an idea dubbed the “Netflix of Football” or “Premflix”.
The fifth official
Just as the 20 largest football clubs in the world take control of their international content distribution, the government's right hand hovers over to its left breast pocket threatening to pull out a yellow card. Reviving a Bill introduced by the last government but which did not pass before the election, the new Labour government has re-introduced to Parliament a 'strengthened' version of the Football Governance Bill, which gives the proposed new independent football regulator greater powers over the clubs in the top five leagues. These would allow the regulator to step in in relation to the Premier League's 'parachute payments' that are given to relegated clubs, the power to require clubs to provide "effective engagement" with fans on changes to ticket prices, and on changes to strip and proposals to relocate home grounds, a commitment to do more to improve equality, diversity and inclusion, and a duty not to join prohibited competitions (such as the failed European Super League from 2021). The regulator will have the ability to issue penalties of up to 10% of a club’s revenue or the suspension or revocation of a club’s operating licence.
The original Bill prompted a warning from UEFA that England could be excluded from the European Championship it is co-hosting in 2028 over concerns that the new Independent Football Regulator (IFR) could lead to government interference in the sport. General secretary of UEFA, Theodore Theodoridis, stated "The IFR's scope must remain focused on the long-term financial sustainability of clubs with a view to ensuring that it does not overstep into areas that might be perceived as external interference in football governance". UEFA also objected to clauses in the legislation that oblige the IFR to "consider the government's foreign and trade policy objectives" when deciding on the suitability of future club owners, but these have been dropped in the re-introduced draft of the Bill. Also, UEFA's concerns allude to 'scope creep' concerning the IFR's powers, rather than the specifics of the Bill itself, and so it is not expected to lead to any immediate action against the English game.
The Bill progressed partly through the Parliamentary process before the election, and has cross-party support, so is likely to progress relatively smoothly and quickly into law, possibly as early as late 2025.
