Tokyo calling
Breaking: There's a newsletter shortage
I’m currently loafing in Japan.
If you’re a burglar, please take the telly but leave the air fryer, I’ve become quite attached to it (it does nice chips).
So instead of writing, I’m off to spend the day on the Tokyo metro system.
Wish me luck.
That’s a long way of saying, no newsletters this week or next.
But I wanted to flag this week’s episode of The Bundle:
What would happen if Sky merged with ITV?
The answer lies in Germany.
RTL Group acquired Sky Deutschland in June 2025 for €150 million, creating a combined media entity holding major German sports rights, including Bundesliga, Premier League, DFB-Pokal, and Formula 1 through 2029. Previously, the two companies established a 2024 content partnership sharing Formula 1, Premier League, and Europa League, which now merges under one roof, uniting streaming platforms RTL+ and WOW.
What’s Actually Happened to Competitive Tension
Before the acquisition, Germany had a functional — if fragile — duopoly in premium sports rights: Sky Deutschland as the pay-TV incumbent, RTL as the free-to-air challenger with growing streaming ambitions. Even their 2024 content-sharing partnership, while collaborative, kept two separate commercial entities in the market, each with their own subscriber bases, platforms, and negotiating positions. Rights holders had at least two credible domestic bidders for premium properties.
Post-acquisition, that’s gone. Bundesliga (87% of games), Formula 1, Premier League, DFB-Pokal — all under one roof. RTL+ and WOW are now the same commercial entity reaching ~12 million subscribers in DACH. When the next rights cycle opens, the Bundesliga, UEFA, and Formula One Management will be negotiating with a single dominant domestic buyer rather than playing two parties against each other.
That matters enormously for price discovery. Competitive tension between bidders is how rights values get established. Remove it, and you remove the upward pressure on fees. The EU approved this in April 2026, which means regulators decided the threat to competition from global platforms (Netflix, Amazon, Apple, DAZN) outweighed the domestic consolidation concern. That’s a significant call, and one worth interrogating.
The Counterargument the Industry Will Make
The combined entity argument — 12 million subscribers, unified platform, stronger hand against global streamers — is that scale creates a more credible domestic champion. The logic is that a fragmented German market of two mid-sized players couldn’t compete with Amazon or Apple bidding for rights anyway, so consolidation actually protects the domestic rights ecosystem. This is the argument RTL Group made to regulators, and it worked.
Ten Questions
1. Is a single dominant domestic buyer structurally better or worse for rights holders than two weaker ones? The combined entity argument is about competing with global platforms — but Bundesliga and DFB negotiate with whoever turns up. If only one serious domestic bidder is at the table in 2029, what does that do to the floor price?
2. Sky Deutschland was never profitable despite holding premium rights for years. RTL paid €150 million for a business that couldn’t make money. What does that tell you about the fundamental economics of pay-TV sports in Germany — and has consolidation fixed any of those structural problems, or just merged them?
3. The EU approved this on the basis that global streamers provide sufficient competitive constraint. Is that actually true in Germany? Amazon holds Bundesliga highlights, DAZN has a presence — but are they genuine alternatives for the full live rights package, or did regulators accept an argument that sounded better than it was?
4. RTL+ and WOW are now the same entity. From a consumer perspective, what’s the product strategy — do they merge platforms, maintain separate brands for different demographics, or is this just a cost-reduction exercise dressed up as strategy?
5. Formula 1 is split across free-to-air RTL and pay-TV Sky Germany. That made sense as a partnership between two independent companies. Does it still make sense internally — and who inside the combined entity is arguing for free-to-air exposure versus paid subscriber acquisition?
6. Does one dominant platform partner simplify distribution, or does it give that partner more leverage over the terms on which your content reaches German fans?
7. The 2029 Bundesliga rights renewal is the first major test of this new market structure. If RTL-Sky is the only serious domestic bidder, does the DFL need a credible international platform to enter the German market just to maintain competitive tension — and is that realistic?
8. This deal got EU approval in April 2026, over a year after the acquisition was announced. What does the length of that regulatory process tell you about how contested the competition argument actually was — and are there conditions attached to the approval that could matter?
9. The combined entity reaches ~12 million paying subscribers in DACH. That sounds significant, but Netflix Germany alone is bigger. At what point does the “domestic champion” framing become a polite way of describing a business that’s still too small to compete with the global platforms on equal terms?
10. The difficult question: is this consolidation good for German sports fans? They now have one primary destination for Bundesliga, F1, and Premier League. Is that simplification a feature — or is the loss of competitive tension going to show up in higher prices, worse product, and less innovation over the next rights cycle?
Right anyway, that turned out to be longer than anticipated.
Till next time.