- French TV channel C8 had its broadcasting licence stripped by regulators
- Media conglomerate Vivendi decided to list Canal+ in London last year
Canal+ has warned that its 2025 revenues would be affected by the closure of a terrestrial television channel and the end of third-party content contracts.
The French media giant, which debuted on the London Stock Exchange in December, expects organic sales to rise this year but said this would be ‘slightly more than offset’ by the shutdown of free-to-air TV channel C8 at the end of February.
Described as France’s answer to America’s Fox News by some detractors, C8 had its broadcasting licence stripped by regulators after being accused of political bias, airing fake news, and promoting conspiracy theories.
Towards the end of 2024, Canal+ announced it would remove its paid channels from terrestrial TV in France the following June, citing C8 losing its licence and ‘an increasingly restrictive tax and regulatory environment’.
Canal+ also said turnover would be hit by the cancellation of multiple contracts related to sublicensing and third-party content in France, such as Disney.
The Paris-based group helped launch Disney+ into the French market in 2019, but its 26.9 million subscribers lost access to the streaming service at the start of this year.
Box office success: StudioCanal production Paddington in Peru has grossed over $170million worldwide so far
Over the medium term, the company anticipates sales growing ‘moderately’, when excluding any impact from its acquisition of South African-based entertainment firm MultiChoice Group.
Its revenue increased by 3.6 per cent to €6.45billion last year on the back of solid performance across all segments.
Sales in Europe tipped up 2 per cent to €4.7billion, supported by the highest growth in its retail subscriber base across mainland France for 15 years.
This was despite price hikes, Canal+ refusing to renew its contract to show Ligue 1 football matches and the end of the UEFA Champions League sublicense to Altice Group.
Meanwhile, revenue across Asia and Africa grew by 3.5 per cent to nearly €1.04billion thanks partly to subscribers soaring by almost half at the telecommunication services provider GVA.
Canal+’s revenues were further boosted by the strong box office performances of movies made by its film production arm, Studiocanal.
Paddington in Peru has grossed over $170million worldwide so far, while the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black topped the charts in eight countries, and the romantic drama Beating Hearts sold five million tickets alone in France.
As a result, the company’s underlying earnings before nasties increased by 5.4 per cent to €503million.
Maxime Saada, chief executive of Canal+, said the firm was ‘firmly on track to reach its ambition to become a global media and entertainment leader with 50 to 100 million subscribers’.
Media conglomerate Vivendi decided to list Canal+ on the London Stock Exchange in mid-December last year in a rare victory for the struggling UK markets.
However, while the firm’s flotation raised £2.6billion and was the largest initial public offering in London since 2022, its share price has plummeted by around 39 per cent from its debut to 178.15p as of Tuesday.
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