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RTL’s streaming subscribers in Germany, Hungary and France jumped 21 percent to 6.8 million last year, the company announced, with streaming revenue up 42 percent at $440 million.
By Scott Roxborough
Europe Bureau Chief
European television giant RTL Group is closing in on profitability in its streaming division, with subscriber figures and online revenues surging last year and start-up costs falling.
In its year-end results, published Thursday, RTL said subscribers to its streaming services RTL+ in Germany and Hungary and the new M6+ platform in France jumped 21 percent to more than 6.8 million. Streaming revenues were up an impressive 42 percent at €403 million ($437 million), boosted by price hikes for the RTL+ service in Germany. RTL’s German service accounts for the lion’s share of the group’s subscriber business, with some 6.06 million paying subscribers. Streaming start-up losses at the division were down some 22 percent to €137 million ($149 million)
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RTL CEO Thomas Rabe hailed the results as a “turning point” for the company’s digital future. “Our streaming services continued to grow dynamically and significantly reduced their start-up losses in 2024. We are firmly on track to reach profitability by 2026,” Rabe said in a statement.
RTL’s aggressive push into streaming was further bolstered by a renewed partnership with Deutsche Telekom, extending RTL+ Premium’s integration into Telekom’s MagentaTV through 2030. The move is expected to drive further subscriber gains in Germany. Rabe also pointed to promising early results in France, where the company rebranded its streaming service M6+ (from 6play) and launched last May, noting monthly users on the new platform were up 30 percent and streaming hours increased by 35 percent compared to its predecessor.
Looking ahead, RTL projects 9 million streaming subscribers and €750 million ($816 million) in revenue by 2026.
RTL’s free TV business, still the company’s core, presented a less rosy picture. The combined audience share of RTL Deutschland’s German networks in its key 14-59 demographic fell to 26.3 percent from 27.4 percent a year earlier. TV ad revenue was flat at €2.35 billion ($2.56 billion). Rabe put a positive spin on the figures by pointing to the worse-off competitor ProSiebenSat.1, noting that RTL Deutschland’s audience share over ProSiebenSat.1’s combined channel reach was 6.3 percentage points, the widest in more than 10 years.
Overall, group revenue at RTL was stable at €6.25 billion ($6.81 billion), with total group profit down slightly at €555 million ($604 million) compared to €598 million a year earlier.
Revenue at Fremantle, RTL’s content production division, saw an 8 percent “organic” decline, which the group attributed to the 2023 U.S. actor and director strikes and by budget cuts from streaming services and advertising-financed broadcasters. The drop was particularly offset by Fremantle’s acquisition of TV production groups Asacha Media and Beach House Pictures. Asacha, a private equity-backed group, owns several production outfits in France, Italy and the U.K., including Death in Paradise producers Red Planet Pictures; Italian scripted groups Picomedia (Beyond the Sea, La Storia) and Stand by Me (Diaries); and France’s Srab Films (Saint Omer, Happening) and Mintee Studios (Cimetiere Indien). Singapore-based Beach House has a non-scripted focus and produces shows including Netflix’s Mind Your Manners and Mr. Midnight as well as local versions of global franchises such as Masterchef Singapore.
On the creative side, Fremantle enjoyed a banner 2024, with Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, produced by Fremantle-owned Element Pictures, picking up four Oscars.
But with revenues of €2.25 billion ($2.45 billion), Fremantle is still a long way off its stated target of €3 billion ($3.26 billion) in annual revenues. RTL on Thursday casually moved the goalposts for that target, saying it hopes to hit the €3 billion mark “mid-term,” not by 2026, as originally forecast.
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