Canal+ secures Champions League until 2027
September 16, 2022
From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris
Canal+ Group has secured a range of sport rights for multiple years. Canal+ will air the UEFA Champions League and the Europa League up to 2027, the Premier League until 2025, Rugby Top 14 until 2027 and Formula 1 until 2029.
Introducing the Canal+ 2022/2023 season, chairman and CEO Maxime Saada described it as a collection of many premieres. Besides sports, Canal+ also announced a line-up of 10 new original productions, 60 foreign series including Michael Mann’s Tokyo Vice, as well 250 original documentaries. Canal+ is also screening 400 new feature films this season.
The group, which is now able to show new films six months after their first theatrical release following the media window agreement signed January 2022, said it has renewed rights with all the US studios and two long-term deals with Universal and Sony.
Claiming an 8 per cent growth of the subscriber portfolio over one year because of “the content, the aggregation strategy and the TV experience,” Canal+ also announced the deployment in France and in all its international markets of a ‘green’ and eco-friendly set-top box. Satellite, fibre/ADSL and IPTV compatible, the new Global One will be unveiled in December 2022 with the aim of making a 65 per cent energy saving.
Canal+ also suggests that Global One’s new recommendation algorithm will help subscribers to choose a content in less than three minutes among the 100,000 titles displayed on MyCanal on-demand platform.
The on-demand offer gathers around 12 million unique visitors per month.
Regarding its strategy of aggregating third party SVoD platforms on MyCanal, Canal+ has confirmed the exclusive launch of Paramount+ service at year end. The group already distribute Netflix, Disney+ and Starzplay.
“Our goal is to sign deals with all the platforms; we’re in discussions with Apple TV, Prime Video, HBO Max,” commented Saada.
Questioned over the commercial dispute with TF1 which has led Canal+ to drop broadcasting TF1’s FTA DTT channels, Saada maintained the point that TF1 was seeking a 50 per cent increase in its contract., which he said was not possible ahead of the potential merger with M6.
The outcome of the September 13th court hearing regarding the TF1 channels blackout on TNT Sat will be revealed on September 22nd, with counsel for TF1 claiming that the TF1 Premium contract (live and additional services) amounted to €13 million. “That’s the same as what we negotiate with US studios,” noted Saada.