Advanced Television

Paramount+ looks to international for growth

March 23, 2023

From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris

Paramount+ will commission 150 non-US originals by 2025, EVP and international general manager Marco Nobili told Series Mania. The streamer, launched in March 2021, claims it has achieved an “impressive” global rollout into 45 markets.

“Streaming is a game you have to play at scale” says Nobili, who defends the hybrid development approach, balancing D2C distribution with partners such as Canal+. With 56 million subscribers worldwide, the service has added 9.9 million subscribers in 2022 last quarter and grown revenue by 81 per cent year-on-year.

Paramount+, which says global content streaming investments amount to $6 billion (€5.5bn) a year, say that half of the 8 per cent growth forecast over the next five years for all the streaming activities, not only its own, would come from the international market. “Our international content is ready to step in and feed the service if we have less coming on the US side,” Nobili added.

Paramount+ also confirmed it plans to expand content franchises in the vein of Dexter or Yellowstone. Among the upcoming internationally expanding franchises, Marco Nobili revealed RuPaul’s Drag Race will have a third season to its Italian version, ahead of the US and Latin America later this year. The show was originally produced by MTV Entertainment Studios and World of Wonder.

“Building franchises doesn’t mean taking away originality. If you do a sequel of a show, audiences go down, but a prequel amps up the franchise. You can watch the prequel without having seen the original,” Nobili believes.

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