The £4.3bn deal values VodafoneThree at an enterprise value of just under £14bn — about 7.7 times next year’s ebitda after depreciation on its lease liabilities, a premium to the roughly 6 times typical for European peers. But Vodafone Three still has a lot of overlapping costs to cut from when Vodafone’s network merged with Three, which means that profit is forecast to grow about 9 per cent a year to 2030 according to Enders Analysis. On that year’s estimates, the acquisition multiple falls to nearer 5.9 times, which is broadly in line with the European sector. Vodafone will be able to spread its general and marketing costs over more revenue.

Karen Egan at Enders Analysis said the deal is “probably for the best as it simplifies the governance of VodafoneThree at a very important time for the company”.

She added: “The price paid looks like quite a full multiple … but it’s a fair one given the growth prospects over the coming years from the merger synergies.

"Given the structure of the streaming model it is almost impossible to robustly attribute profitability to any single piece of content," says Tom Harrington of media researchers Enders Analysis. He explains that the only ways to do this would be to prove that the specific production led to "a massive volume of incremental sign-ups" or if there is a clear link between viewing and other revenue streams.

Harrington adds that the inability to prove whether a film or a show is financially successful for Amazon may not actually matter as the exclusive streaming content is simply a "a hook to get viewers there in the first place."

The PE firms, which invested in so-called altnets — or alternative networks — are now faced with a sector that has more than £9bn of net debt, according to Enders Analysis, with the dozens of companies posting a combined loss of more than £1.5bn in 2024.

“The overlapping networks between buyer and seller will prompt the CMA to look carefully at the deal to ensure that there will not be anti-competitive effects that will lead to higher consumer pricing,” said Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis. 

“However, the companies will argue that the increase in wholesale competition over a wider geographic area will mitigate these concerns.” 

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at the analyst firm Enders, said networks have long been trying to conserve spiralling energy costs, even before the war.

Each 5G mast gobbles about as much power as 73 households, according to experts, with some even calling them ‘energy vampires’.

The entire mobile network consumes 370,000 homes’ worth of power a year, or a little under one terawatt-hour of electricity.

‘Of course they are mindful to ensure that there is no customer disruption from this,’ Egan told Metro. ‘If there are energy shortages, then they could possibly push these capacity-limiting efforts a bit harder, getting closer to the levels where some customer disruption is possible.’

“The price reflects scarcity value,” said Abi Watson, an analyst at Enders Analysis. “It’s above what the underlying economics of a still print-heavy business would traditionally support, but he’s been after it for two decades, his rationale is different to most owners, and it is a done deal.”

“In theory, this deal will let SiriusXM find the same people when they are on YouTube and fill in some of those gaps,” said Jamie MacEwan, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis, noting that it seems to be more about reaching scale and depth in a way SiriusXM’s own platforms alone can’t

Abi Watson, head of publishing at media research firm Enders, argues that the FT’s move into personality-led YouTube franchises is less a bid for raw reach than a signal of a structural shift in audience development. 

The FT is unusually well insulated compared with most publishers: its corporate subscription base effectively acts as its own funnel, stressed Watson. Large professional services and accountancy firms buy institutional access, which then familiarizes young professionals with the brand long before they might pay for an individual subscription. “So when the FT decides it needs personality-led YouTube franchises, that’s not a publisher in distress reaching for reach,” said Watson. “It’s a publisher with an unusually defensible position accepting that discovery is now a creator economy problem, and that parasocial attachment to named journalists is doing work that SEO and brand alone no longer do,” she said. 

According to Enders Analysis, publishers are facing headwinds thanks to “structural assymetry” in how consumers interact with them vis-à-vis platforms.

As Enders Analysis notes, this leads to a situation in which “publishers are producing journalism, but platforms are capturing the majority of time spent with it.”

Meanwhile, as Enders writes, credit and compensation for original content “are coming further adrift”, with newsrooms that break stories “capturing less and less of the commercial reward it generates”.

As the report’s authors (head of publishing Abi Watson, senior research analyst Claire Holubowskyj, and media analyst Laura Darcey) explain, in the days of print news, scoops provided news organisations with hours, if not days, of competitive advantage, both in attaining audience and driving revenue based on that audience.

“However, today, exclusives rarely act as moats,” they note.