The EconomistFebruary 6th 2021 Business 53I
f a footballmatch is played but no fans
watch it, either in the stands or on televi-
sion, did it really happen? The quandary
might once have amused Albert Camus, a
fine goalkeeper who dabbled in philoso-
phising. It is also existential, in another
way, for French football clubs. First, co-
vid-19 has deprived them of live suppor-
ters. Then the top league’s broadcasting
partner skipped town without paying.
Teams that once feared relegation now
worry about bankruptcy.
This year France’s Ligue 1 had hoped to
kick off its journey to the European elite.
Though the national team won the most re-
cent World Cup, the domestic champion-
ship in which many of its stars compete is,
financially speaking, outplayed by richer
leagues in England, Germany, Italy and
Spain. A whopper broadcasting deal start-
ing this season, worth over €1bn ($1.2bn) a
year, up by 60% on the previous arrange-
ment, would help it level the playing field.
The deal proved too big a whopper even
for Mediapro, the Spanish broadcasting
group with Chinese backers that snapped
up most of the matches. The channel it had
set up to show Ligue 1 clashes attracted few
punters. Stretched for cash, it made just
one quarterly instalment in August, then
stopped paying entirely. By December the
contract was voided.
On February 1st an auction was heldtoPARIS
The beautiful game is in an ugly
financial situationFootball TV rightsGoalless defeat
The league is hurting, tooS
eldom has a tech giant excoriated an-
other as Apple did Facebook. “What are
the consequences of prioritising conspira-
cy theories and violent incitement simply
because of their high rates of engagement?”
asked Apple’s boss, Tim Cook, in a speech
on January 28th. “A social dilemma”, he
thundered, “cannot be allowed to become a
social catastrophe.” Facebook was singled
out without being named. Last year it com-
plained about its portrayal in “The Social
Dilemma”, a hit Netflix documentary.
Mr Cook’s warning came in response to
Facebook’s own broadsides against Apple’s
forthcoming “app-tracking transparency”
measure. Soon a pop-up from Apple will
start asking users of the latest version of
ios, its mobile operating system, if they
want named apps such as Facebook to track
their digital activity across other compa-
nies’ apps and websites. Huge numbers are
expected to demur. That is likely to damage
Facebook, possibly Google and a wide
range of other ad-tech businesses.
Mr Cook’s righteous wrath makes it easy
to forget how in the early days, Apple en-
abled ad tracking. In the 2000s app devel-
opers and advertisers learned to use its
“unique device identifiers” to follow users
around the internet. These udids, as they
were known for short, were permanently
attached to every iPhone or iPad and made
it easy to keep tabs on individuals’ online
activity. Then in 2010 a privacy furore
erupted around Apple and Google. Two
years later Apple responded by banning
app developers from using udids. For a
brief few months advertisers could barelytrack its customers at all.
The sixth incarnation of iosintroduced
a new, less intrusive tool called “identifiers
for advertisers”. Unlike udids, these can be
blocked, and do not identify users perso-
nally; any data collected are aggregated be-
fore being used. But they still allow track-
ing, which is switched on by default on
iPhones, and fiddly to turn off. Apple’s aim
back then was to help app developers earn
revenue in ios.
Now privacy is more central than ever to
Apple’s brand. Four years ago it stopped
tracking users on Safari, its web browser.
Google, too, has announced plans to elimi-
nate third-party tracking “cookies” from its
Chrome browser by 2022. Ad-industry in-
siders find it odd that identifiers for adver-
tisers are still around; last year some in the
mobile-ad industry reckoned Apple was
going to kill them off. With app-tracking
transparency at least some users will pre-
sumably allow cookies to stay.
Facebook has nevertheless fought back
hard. In December the social network took
out newspaper ads claiming that Apple’s
changes would hurt small businesses. An-
nouncing Facebook’s earnings on January
27th Mark Zuckerberg, its boss, explained
how his firm gives tiny firms ad-targeting
tools that in the past only large companies
had the resources to employ. This echoed
other ad-tech types’ warnings of a return to
a “spray and pay” world where, once again,
half of all ads are wasted but no one knows
which half. Moreover, Facebook argues,
Apple is trying to shift the internet’s busi-
ness model from one that is chiefly ad-sup-
ported to one that is increasingly paid for.
In this view, Apple’s stance on privacy is
not selfless but self-serving.
Facebook’s campaign against Apple
could go beyond public admonishments.
Last month rumours swirled that Mr Zuck-
erberg’s firm might sue the iPhone-maker
over alleged preferential treatment given
to its own apps in its App Store, while it im-
poses restrictions on third-party develop-
ers like Facebook. Apple’s App Store is al-
ready under scrutiny by America’s
Department of Justice and the European
Union’s competition watchdog.
Of course, Facebook’s own protesta-
tions are not exactly disinterested. It may
want to divert attention from the antitrust
lawsuits it itself faces. And the company
will probably take a hit to its top line as a re-
sult of Apple’s move. In late January it
named the latest ioschanges as a head-
wind for its ad business this year.
Most people will welcome Apple’s pri-
vacy proposal. But its ability to impose it on
a big industry has underlined its power in a
way that may not be entirely helpful for it.
As for Facebook, its task now is to come up
with its own pop-up to reassure people that
its ad-tracking is harmless—even for the
most talented ad creative, a tough brief. 7Apple’s privacy policy kicks Facebook
where it hurtsFeuding tech giantsCook v Zuck
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