Salto: ‘Fewer than 300,000 subs’
January 6, 2022
From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris
French SVoD service Salto has marked its first anniversary substantially below its objective of one million subscribers in year one and is well below subscription numbers of rival services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, according to reports.
Launched in October 2020 by groups TF1, M6 and France Télévisions, the joint-venture, which has yet to reveal numbers, has fewer than 300,000 paying subscribers at summer 2021, according to reports, which suggest Salto only registered a 5 per cent subscription rate among French homes subscribing to one or several platforms, leading to €72 million net losses at mid-2021.
Salto also suffer from an incomplete distribution network, notably regarding its presence on STBs. Eight months after launch, only one deal had been signed – with IPTV operator Bouygues Telecom, a TF1 subsidiary.
Multiplay operators Orange, SFR and Free are not seeking to distribute Salto as they already carry TF1, M6 and France Télévisions’s catch-up TV services.