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Netflix has “a well-oiled machine when it comes to lobbying in Europe,” says François Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis. The company has a longstanding dialogue with Brussels, he notes, having engaged in lots of back and forth over the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS) norm that forces foreign streamers to invest a portion of their revenue into local productions. A norm that, by and large, Netflix abides by.

This could force the channel to raise its prices and make Tavernost's ambitious goal of reaching over two million subscribers very uncertain. "Ligue 1+ doesn't seem to have the potential to generate revenue at the level it was still at in 2023-2024... I don't know of any top-tier leagues that survive on their own channel," explains François Godard, a sports rights analyst at Enders Analysis.

According to François Godard, a media and telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis who covers the development of football media rights agreements and subscription trends across Europe, the gap in broadcasting revenue is likely to persist and may widen further. Broadcasters, he explains, are drawn to competitiveness and a league’s perceived value, creating a structural virtuous cycle over time. 

“As the Premier League is becoming more attractive, they get more money. They buy the best players, which then increases the attraction for broadcasters. Furthermore, they buy players from other European countries, which attract their viewers. This again raises the value of the rights,” he says.

Tom Harrington, head of television at Enders Analysis, said there was "no way that Max could have successfully launched here without a deal with Sky", and that the agreement means HBO Max will be in more than 10 million households from launch.

"All the big continuing shows (House of the Dragon, Last of Us, White Lotus) will continue to be on Sky, so Max would be relying completely on new shows, especially Harry Potter, to grow a business from scratch," he said.

"On the content side, it's worth noting that HBO's hit rate is quite phenomenal - they don't release a lot but always have a few current shows with considerable cultural cut-through."

And with RTL Group’s acquisition of Sky Deutschland on track to receive regulatory approval this year, ProSieben’s new owners MFE-MediaForEurope are seeking partnerships that can bring scale to the German broadcaster’s offering – though that scale may be limited by the slow customer growth of MagentaTV, argues François Godard, Media and Telecoms Analyst at Enders Analysis.

“This was overdue,” comments Godard. “The new MFE management is rightly moving to make the ProSieben content available on more platforms and MagentaTV is an obvious place to start as it poses no strategic threat. However, note that Magenta has low penetration with only 4.7 million subscribers (barely about 11 percent of German homes) and is growing very slowly, with only 135,000 subscribers added in the past four quarters.”