ITV was "a faller on Tuesday on fears that advertising sales have turned negative." Morgan Stanley downgraded the broadcaster to “equal weight” ahead of its first-quarter trading update due on Thursday. Feedback from media buyers suggests May sales were "stagnating," having been up about 6%. It forecast ad sales at ITV channels to fall in '16, "in spite of a boost from the Euro 2016 football tournament in June" (FINANCIAL TIMES, 5/10).
Kenyans using mobile-money platform M-Pesa to bet on the outcome of sporting events helped Vodafone's unit in the East African country "boost transaction volumes by 48 percent in the past year." Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore said that service, offered by Safaricom Ltd. in East Africa's biggest economy, "is now transacting" about 5B shillings ($50M) a day. Collymore said, "We’re seeing tremendous growth. Sports betting is one which is using M-Pesa a lot and had we not done this we would have really struggled to meet capacity there. That sector has now absolutely overtaken everyone else" (BLOOMBERG, 5/9).
