Fifteen years ago a then 30-year-old Ashley Tabor-King sparked a British radio revolution striking the first of a series of deals totalling more than £600m that would ultimately create Europe’s biggest commercially funded group, owner of stations from Capital and Heart to LBC and Classic FM.
Earlier this week, Tabor-King’s Global once again flexed its financial muscle by signing deals with BBC stars Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel, who will join former colleague Andrew Marr at LBC, reportedly doubling their salaries in the process.
The move is classic Global: spend big to get bigger by exploiting opportunity in the market, backed by a seemingly unlimited reservoir of cash bankrolled by its controlling shareholder – Tabor-King’s father.
In the mid-noughties Tabor-King – who had worked at Capital Radio in the 1990s before setting up a music company where he worked with acts including Corinne Bailey Rae and The Wanted – spied a looming sea change in British radio.
The inexorable switch to digital radio would help level the playing field with the BBC, which had dominated with the prime FM and AM spectrum, while consolidation among commercial players would give the scale needed to compete and take advantage of a future iPhone, smart speaker and podcast generation of listening.
“Daddy basically bought the company,” says one industry executive, referring to Tabor-King’s £375m deal to buy the owner of Capital Radio in 2008, then the biggest commercial operator in the UK. “That doesn’t mean their strategy isn’t sound and well-executed, but it definitely helps having deep pockets though.”
Tabor-King, who changed his name on marrying his partner George King in 2019, is the son of Michael Tabor. Monaco-based Tabor has made a fortune estimated by the Sunday Times at more than £600m from a combination of investments in gambling, buying BetVictor in 2014, plus a string of thoroughbred racehorses.
In 2007, Global made its first move buying Chrysalis Radio, home to Heart, Galaxy and LBC, for £170m. At the time the deal was reported to be backed by Tabor and wealthy Irish businessmen including John Magnier and JP McManus, his fellow partners in the Coolmore Stud racing stable. Former ITV chief executive Charles Allen, later Lord Allen of Kensington, assumed the role of chairman of Global, a position he still holds.
Five years later a final major deal, a fiercely contested £70m bidding war for GMG Radio, then third-biggest player in the UK and part of the group that owns the Guardian, cemented Global’s place as the biggest commercial player in British radio.
Global, which takes half the £700m spent on radio advertising annually in the UK, made £358m in revenues in the pre-pandemic year to the end of March 2020.
While operating profits hit £60m, the business continues to make significant losses at a pre-tax level. This is in part due to a structure whereby Global, which is ultimately incorporated in Jersey, is financed by £1.7bn loans from the Tabor family and banks.
“The group is primarily funded by debt and although both shareholder and bank loans have increased during the year, the group’s operations are cash generative,” the company said in its most recent annual financial filing to Companies House.
This financial freedom has allowed Global to aggressively invest and grow through good times and bad, under the group chief executive, Stephen Miron, who joined from the publisher of the Daily Mail in 2008.
Global has had the deep pockets to be able to strike a raft of deals to secure must-listen stars in recent years, including Kate Garraway, Amanda Holden, Moira Stuart, John Humphrys, Alexander Armstrong and Eddie Mair.
Maitlis, who secured the famous Prince Andrew interview, will work alongside former North America editor Sopel to front the new podcast for Global Player and host a radio show together on LBC. They will work with Dino Sofos, the founder and chief executive of the audio production company Persephonica, a former head of BBC news podcasts and the creator of Brexitcast, Newscast and Americast.
With 18 brands, including a growing number of extensions from Capital Dance and Smooth Country to Heart 80s, Global is able to commercialise 26m weekly listeners which account for 24% of all radio listening.
While the pandemic fuelled a precipitous decline in revenues as commuting by car ground to a halt, a key commercial radio audience, the industry bounced back rapidly as listening to radio and podcasts at home boomed.
Online listening, including via smart speakers, now accounts for 17% of all listening time. Digital listening, including DAB radio, represents 65% of all radio listening.
By the first quarter of last year, which proved to be the biggest ever for annual radio revenues at £718m according to the Radiocentre, Global’s radio operation saw revenues climb 3% over pre-pandemic levels.
The company does not reveal details of the performance of podcasts, but points to significant success with originals including John Sweeney’s Hunting Ghislaine, Rachel Johnson’s Difficult Women and Vogue Williams’ My Therapist Ghosted Me.
“Younger adults, especially the under-24s, are listening to much less radio overall than previously, and the sector will find it difficult to draw these people in as they get older,” says Gill Hind, a director at Enders Analysis. “Hence their investments in podcasts and streaming services.”
Four years ago Global made another audacious move to diversify and strengthen its overall media business by striking a number of deals for outdoor advertising companies including Exterion, which runs the £1.1bn contract for Transport for London including London Underground, the biggest of its kind in the world.
The sector was one of the worst-hit during the pandemic as cities effectively shut down but it is recovering rapidly, giving Global more than a third share of a £1bn-plus UK outdoor advertising market, and boosting the company’s overall annual revenues well over £700m.
While the BBC faces having to find as much as £2bn in savings over the next six years as the government squeezes licence-fee income, occasional glimpses into the life of low-profile Tabor-King gives a stark insight into the differing financial fortunes the two radio giants find themselves.
As well as having held New Year’s Eve parties at the family’s Sunset Reef home in Barbados, reportedly attended in the past by Simon Cowell and Sir Philip Green, Tabor-King made headlines in 2017 when he was refused permission to knock together two flats in Knightsbridge to create a £200m penthouse flat.
Still, Global’s 2,000 employees can take some solace that they weren’t forgotten when Tabor-King was awarded an OBE for services to the media industry the same year, when he tweeted: “This one is for everyone @global”.
