This week: the European Super League strikes back; Warner Bros Discovery scales up; and SportsPro shares its 25 stories of the year
The Takeaway is Trippant’s round-up of essential stories on communications trends in sport, entertainment and experience.??
This week: the European Super League strikes back, Warner Bros Discovery scales up, SportsPro shares its 25 stories of the year, Endeavor sees the whole board, Marvel starts over, Reddit’s CEO speaks, and much, much more.
Despite a spectacular failure to launch in 2021, football’s European Super League never really went away. Now, it looks set to dominate the conversation once more in 2024.
The European Court of Justice has ruled that Uefa and Fifa acted unlawfully in threatening to sanction players and teams that joined that previous breakaway effort, opening the door to interested clubs and their A22 vehicle to try again.?
Demand from fans or commercial partners is in no way guaranteed but regardless of the success of the Super League project itself, this could be a moment that completely resets the competitive picture.?
SportsPro with the 25 stories that shaped 2023?
Another year is almost over and for the sports business, it’s been one that has laid out more clues about a future some way beyond the status quo.?
Against that backdrop, the team at SportsPro have pulled together their features, reporting and podcasts on the most consequential stories of the past 12 months – from surging Saudi investment to the continued rise of women’s sport, mega-mergers, Messi mania, media disruption, World Cups and startup struggles.
Typically comprehensive, it is a fascinating reflection of an industry in flux.
The great consolidation of entertainment media is truly underway. Reports are circulating that Warner Bros Discovery – itself the $29 billion result of a merger completed in 2022 – are in talks with Paramount Global over a further amalgamation.
That bigger corporation would be designed to fend off the threat of big tech and form an entity more suited to the financial demands of the era. Whether or not that works – and discussions are at a very early stage – it is just one of a number of boardroom moves that could well reshape the media ecosystem across entertainment, sport and gaming in 2024.
The New York Times on the quiet return of Netflix licensing
Before Axios broke the news of Warner Bros Discovery’s interest, Paramount was said to be open to buddying up with Apple to attract subscribers to its streaming service.
That comes with major studios eschewing exclusivity on their own-brand OTT platforms and returning to audience-building – and still lucrative – distribution partnerships with Netflix.?
Call it rationalisation over differentiation, or an acknowledgment of tough market realities, but these trends all point to a broader rethink ahead.
CNN on Qatar 2022, one year on
It is now a full 12 months since Lionel Messi put the seal on an all-time great career by leading Argentina to Fifa World Cup glory in a remarkable final against France in Qatar.
But with international attention drawn to big-spending event strategies elsewhere in the region, human rights groups are concerned that the reforms the tournament was supposed to drive forward are stalling. So what will the legacy of Qatar 2022 become??
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Variety on Endeavor’s latest gambit
Sports and entertainment giant Endeavor was behind one of the biggest deals of 2023, uniting professional wrestling’s WWE and the UFC mixed martial arts promotion in a $21.4 billion joint company. Now, the final weeks of the year have brought another intriguing cross-cultural investment.?
The group has taken an undisclosed minority stake in Chess.com, the world’s largest online chess platform, and will also represent its commercial interests through WME.?
Endeavor will advise Chess.com on ‘events and experiences, media rights deals, content production and distribution, experiential marketing and brand licensing’, with WME looking to build on the game’s popularity through partnerships and placements across sport, entertainment and fashion. New documentaries and ‘celebrity-centric’ set-pieces are among the moves being lined up.?
The Times goes inside the super-shoe factory
Over the past half-decade, world records in long-distance running events have tumbled again and again, with the times for the men’s and women’s marathon approaching previously unthinkable barriers.
Central to this story of rapid acceleration has been Nike, and more specifically its remarkable, often controversial Vaporfly footwear range. The Times’ Matt Lawton heads to Zotefoams, the unassuming Croydon factory where the shoes’ crucial energy transfer layer is developed.??
Axel Springer confirms OpenAI partnership
ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and, since then, it feels like no one ever quite stopped talking about its potential implications for the media and other information industries.?
That debate will continue into next year with another major news organisation attempting to formalise its generative AI strategy. Axel Springer – the German-based owner of titles including Bild, Welt, Politico and Business Insider – has entered an official partnership that will better determine what content goes into OpenAI’s products, and what financial opportunities come out.?
Fast Company talks Reddit with Steve Huffman
With its massive and engaged user community, resurgent message board platform Reddit is an interesting case study for everything from the importance of content moderation to the impact of large language models (LLMs).?
It is also rumoured to be launching its IPO next year, making this an ideal moment to hear from co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman.??
The BBC on Marvel after Jonathan Majors
Not long ago, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was the template for mass-media entertainment, and Jonathan Majors was Hollywood’s next great movie actor.
But the 34-year-old’s domestic abuse conviction has confirmed – alongside other, more important matters – that neither of those things are true anymore. What comes next for Marvel, which had plotted a its next wave of major releases around Majors’ on-screen presence?
The Guardian on a showstopping gaming trend
Gaming has embraced and reimagined all sorts of narrative possibilities down the years, underlining just how broad its culture and communities have become.?
In 2023, developers fell hard for musical theatre, taking the big number into all sorts of different digital directions.
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