Canal+ Enters Unique Negotiations to Purchase OCS

Canal+ Group has entered unique negotiations to amass the movie and pay TV operations of Orange, France’s main telco group, Selection has realized.

The acquisition, which has been within the works for months, consists of each Orange Studio and OCS, the movie, tv, and pay-TV divisions of Orange. OCS ranks as France’s second native pay TV service behind Canal+. The corporate’s workers have been knowledgeable {that a} deal was being negotiated solely with Canal+. Orange had no remark. Canal+ had not but responded to our request for remark.

Canal+ Group, whose mother or father firm is Vivendi, already owns 33.3% of OCS, the pay-TV arm of Orange, and has been distributing the service on its platform as a part of its cable bundle since 2011.

Orange Studio, in the meantime, is the content material division in control of co-producing, promoting overseas and distributing choose movies in France. The corporate for example distributed Florian Zeller’s “The Father” in France, and likewise has French rights to Zeller’s comply with up “The Son.”

The deal shall be topic to anti-trust approval. In 2011, the anti-trust board blocked Canal+ Group’s try to merge with OCS and launch a premium pay TV channel, however that was earlier than the French market was altered by the arrival of streaming companies. Netflix alone boasts greater than 13 million subscribers in France, forward of Canal+ which had 9.6 million regionally, and OCS with 2.9 million subscribers.

Canal+ has additionally pledged to keep up the corporate’s employees, in response to a supply. Some executives are involved that OCS and Orange Studio could have the identical destiny as TPS, one other pay TV group which was acquired by Canal+ in 2007 and went beneath 5 years later.

OCS, which launched in 2008, ranks as France’s second largest pay TV group behind Canal+. It was initially considered as a rival to Canal+ because it invested closely in premium content material to recruit subscribers. Its dear multi-year take care of HBO helped OCS keep maintain its subscriber base and keep afloat for quite a lot of yr, however the pay TV group by no means managed to turn out to be financially viable. OCS is now about to see its multi-year take care of HBO come to an finish.

Warner Bros. Discovery has delayed the roll out of its mixed HBO-Discovery+ service in France to 2024, and simply signed a take care of Amazon Prime Video for the first-window rights to its unique TV sequence in France beginning subsequent yr.

One other side that can probably be fastidiously explored throughout the gross sales course of is the funding obligations in French and European content material that Canal+ and OCS every have as pay TV companies. OCS signed final February a three-year pact with movie orgs to take a position a minimum of €60 million on French and European movie within the three years. Canal+, in the meantime, has dedicated to investing €600 million in French and European movies from 2022 to 2024.

Canal+ had no remark.