France: SVoD growth stalls
September 1, 2021
From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris
The second quarter of 2021 has seen the first stall in the development of SVoD in France after a 2020 marked by a signification increase of SVoD market penetration.
According to OTT figures released by NPA Conseil, SVoD’s rate of subscriptions to one service at least among French Internet users above 15 years old dipped under the 50 per cent mark, back to its 49.8 per cent level off September 2020, after a peak at 52.8 per cent in March 2021.
French users, on average, are subscribing to 1.9 service per home.
Over the last three months, Netflix lost nearly three points to reach 37 per cent of penetration rate in June 2021, making room for Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ to strengthen their own share. Over the period, both services respectively gained 1.2 points to 22.9 per cent (+ 8.4 per cent year on year) and 0.4 point to 15.4 per cent (+5.2 per cent year on year).
The penetration rates for OCS and Salto were 7.3 per cent (+0.3 point) and 1,8 per cent (+0.4) respectively.
NPA Conseil forecasts that TF1, France Télévisions and M6 joint platform Salto could hope to double its subscribers base and pass the one million mark in the coming months.
The OTT barometer from NPA and Harris Interactive also highlights the ‘OTT-Ready’ French attitude of the audience.
Seventy per cent of French people now own at least one natively OTT device, Smart TV, HDMI dongle or OTT box. One home in two is equipped with a smart TV. As a consequence, the IPTV box is no longer the preferred way of accessing non-linear content.