In Numbers: Sky’s not the limit
£10.2 million
Average cost (€13.8 million) to Sky and BT of broadcasting each live English
Premier League
match under a new three-year deal after a frantic auction, fuelled by a battle to win broadband customers.
70 per cent
Rate of inflation in the total £5.1 billion (€6.9 billion) price of the rights compared with the previous three- year deal. “There is a point where it has to become impossible,” admitted Premier League chief executive
Richard Scudamore
.
£100 million
Estimated prize money (€135 million) that a Premier League club should collect under the new television deal . . . if they finish bottom. (It’s estimated at £156 million – €210 million – for the champions.)
Image of the week: Punctured tyres
If only every company had a mascot as funny as the
Michelin
Man, pictured here grinning whimsically in the background as the chief executive of the tyre company, Jean-Dominique Senard, delivers its annual results presentation in Paris. Senard unveiled an 8.5 per cent decline in profits for 2014 after sales missed the company’s forecasts, but you would never know it from the Michelin Man’s punch-drunk expression. This cross between a gleeful mechanic and the inflatable robot in Disney’s Big Hero 6 is, in fact, 121 years old, so he has probably seen enough weak earnings updates in his time to be sanguine about its latest competitive challenges. Bibendum, to give him his official name, raises a weary eyebrow to your talk of cost-cutting to the tune of €200 million. Photograph: Reuters/Philippe Wojazer
The Lexicon: Reform fatigue
It's a hard life being a central banker – all that time spent changing the world for the better. Now the policymakers and regulators of the financial world are at risk of succumbing to "reform fatigue", according to Bank of England governor Mark Carney. He's worried that everyone has got a little jaded by the thought of tackling concerns about the banks, including the risk that some are "too big to fail". Carney is calling for a big push on implementation. "Many of the toughest reforms are micro-reforms that can have big political coalitions against them," he observed. In short, it can get tiring dealing with all those lobbyists – sometimes it's easier to just agree with them and do nothing.
