Reports: Financial Times

DAZN’s 2018 financials highlighted the difficulty in encouraging consumer adoption of a digital live sports proposition with a limited portfolio of sports rights. 2019 marked a year of consolidation and growth. DAZN learnt quickly that without premium domestic content it is difficult to penetrate competitive markets effectively.

Still feeling imbued with the often cited ‘Trump bump’, paid news media subscriptions continued their healthy growth trajectory throughout 2017 and into the first quarter of 2018. The market, excepting China and India, grew largely in symmetry with other digital behaviours, as premium news brands continued to make their case as a credible alternative to the clickbait-centric news feeds of social media.

As the publishing industry’s issues regarding monetisation move front and centre in the political debate over Facebook’s media influence, the way consumers discover and interact with news content stands at a tipping point. With increasing diversity in consumption patterns across geographical markets and age groups, understanding the digital publishing consumer involves addressing platform distinctions and the wider divide between the traditional and the new.

In an economy based on attention, the monetisation of news in 2017 balances declining advertising revenues against a push towards building subscribers. Emerging business models and shifts in consumer behaviour are reshaping news monetisation and directly impacting the publishers of news content.