French Netflix Rival Gets Long-Awaited Approval From Regulators
French Netflix Rival Gets Long-Awaited Approval From Regulators
(Bloomberg) -- France’s main broadcasters won approval from regulators to establish a streaming platform to rival Netflix Inc.
It’s taken more than a year for Television Francaise 1 SA, Metropole Television SA and France Televisions to get the green light from competition authorities to set up on-demand video service Salto. The companies face a sustained competitive assault from Netflix and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video, and further audience losses could follow when Walt Disney Co. begins its Disney+ platform in Europe later in the year.
The French broadcasters will start Salto in the first quarter of 2020, “pooling their resources in an ambitious local response to changing audience expectations,” they said in a statement.
The three companies, which have so far committed 45 million euros ($50 million) to the project, haven’t said how much they plan to spend on content to challenge Netflix, which is pouring billions of dollars into original content every year.
The new platform also doesn’t involve France’s dominant pay-TV provider Canal+, which is among the biggest losers from Netflix’s surging success. The unit of media group Vivendi SA now has fewer paying subscribers in France than Netflix, which launched less than five years ago and already boasts more than 5 million French customers.
In the U.K., free-to-air broadcasters ITV Plc and the British Broadcasting Corp. are also joining hands to launch their so-called BritBox service in the final quarter of this year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Angelina Rascouet in Paris at arascouet1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Thomas Pfeiffer, Jennifer Ryan
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