AYNE 817 - Citizen AYNE: Peter Hutton

Yeah, I think he does.

And he's certainly a huge sports fan, which definitely helped.

You know, he, you could see him light up when he went to the French Open, you could see him light up around the Olympics.

And that definitely makes life easier.

You know, if you're working with people that understand sports.

how much people care about sport, it makes for an easier relationship.

And I think he got it.

And I think John Malone got it.

And yeah, there's lots of positives from that period that I still see as positives.

And does the Eurosport model on reflection now a few years on, does that works anymore? Or have they upgraded it a lot?

I think every model needs to adapt and evolve, you know, and I think you look at Warner Brothers Discovery and how they've evolved.

You've got to learn, you've got to try and make it better in the context that you work in.

The problem of Eurosport is that you're working in so many different markets in different ways and that...

You know, you need to be a mainline player in Germany and France.

You need to be a peripheral player in India.

You know, there is plenty of different things that you need to do.

And as such, you know, Eurosport was a great business when I got into it.

in that they'd already started doing a streaming product in Eurosport Player with their main core content that the Americans could only dream about.

You know, that was miles away from working in the US at that point.

So loads of positives going in.

And I think, you know, when you look at that paramount acquisition of WBD, I'd hope that Eurosport and TNT is one of the main attractions.

Peter, can I ask a couple of things on that? Because for a lot of people, it's difficult to understand what people are doing now with all these moguls.

In this case, it's Ellison at Paramount that is now buying Warner Brothers and they've made a lot of quite impressive moves into buying sports rights, the UFC, Champions League, etc.

Does this model still work? The subscription model paying huge amounts for sports rights to maybe be a loss leader for something else, maybe on the entertainment side.

Have you got clarity on what these people are trying to do, Peter?