The group’s pay-tv Channel canal+ is preparing to tighten new belt. Next Tuesday, the subsidiary of Vivendi is expected to announce a voluntary redundancy scheme aimed at eliminating at least 500 positions, according to the letter, professional Satellifax, and the site Days. This measure would affect nearly 20 % of the staff of Canal+ in France, with 2 800 employees and 7 000 in total in the world. When questioned, the company has not wanted to comment on. The trade unions in the group have in any case received a summons for Tuesday morning mentioning the proposed plan of voluntary departures.
This decision would be dictated by a competition that has never been so exacerbated. In France, the group owned by businessman Vincent Bolloré is attacked frontally on its two main pillars. The platforms of video, such as Amazon or Netflix have launched the offensive in the field of film and fiction to big budget. Mediapro, who has just won the rights to Ligue 1 for the period 2020-2024, with a € 1 billion on the table, LICO, who has offered the Champions League or beIN Sports have led the fight on the side of the sports competitions.
Canal+ finds himself caught between these two powerful threats. Of course, it displays today 16.2 million subscribers worldwide, including 8.3 million in France. But among these, the individual subscriptions to direct, that is to say, the most profitable, has dropped to 300 000, compared to 2017, to reach to 4.73 million. The other subscribers with respect to them are based on partnerships with telecoms operators. In other words, in france, it is already surpassed by that of Netflix, which claims more than 5 million subscribers.
Staying the course
While new competitors are preparing to invest the territory, like Disney+, Apple+, or WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal, Canal+, which spends almost 3 billion euros in the contents, including $ 500 million in the cinema, must find ways to remain competitive. Between 2016 and 2018, the group has already made nearly $ 450 million of savings. But this has not been sufficient to combat the new giants on a global level. These are capable to offer rich of thousands of hours of programs at a great price and very modest, barely a dozen of euros, that they can amortize on a global scale. In 2019, the analysts estimate that Netflix will spend $ 15 billion dollars in content. It is, however, a pool of 150 million subscribers…
Stay permanently in the race requires Canal+ to be confronted with a double challenge. On the one hand, the encrypted string needs to acquire a critical size. This is the sense, for example, of the acquisition, subject to more than one billion euros, of M7, a european operator of pay television. Thanks to this acquisition, Canal+ will total nearly 20 million subscribers around the world. And, at the same time, the group must lower its fixed costs. In other words, cut in its workforce. Difficult otherwise to offer subscriptions at attractive prices and earn money
” SEE ALSO – Maxime Saada: “I am sure that Canal + will survive” (30/05/2018)
Maxime Saada : “I am sure that Canal + will survive” – Look on Figaro Live
