Explosion of French streaming rights sales worldwide in 2022

International sales of French programs abroad performed in 2022 with a business volume of almost 215 million euros, up 15.4% compared to 2021. And within these international sales, the category of world rights sales reached 57.9 million euros, or 27% of the total sales for the year.

The sales of world rights concern two main categories of activity: on the one hand the sales of TV, video and TV5 world rights for 16.6 million euros, and on the other the sales of streaming rights for 41.4 million euros, or 71% of the total world rights.

The sales of rights for streaming are a real opportunity for French companies, but the CNC takes care to emphasize that “profound changes in marketing practices. The sales of world rights may imply a freezing of any commercial potential over several years, given the exclusive nature of the rights transferred for a given period. » In 2022, 71.5% of these global rights concern non-linear rights: VOD and SVOD but also AVOD and FVOD, against 52.8% in 2021. Driven by a few sales to very significant amounts such as the Legends Office, the Fighters and Vortex, they are growing by 90.4% in 2022 to € 41.4 million, almost double the 2021 figure.

The sector that generates the most activity is SVOD with a sales level of 27.4 million euros, up 104% compared to 2021. At the same time, TVOD is growing by 721%, but at a particularly low level of activity: 500k euros. The surprise of the year 2022 comes from the AVOD. In 2022, AVOD turnover increased by 62.6%, to €12.2 M, or 21.2% of worldwide rights sales, compared to 18.3% in 2021. AVOD is exploding due to the multiplication of platforms based on this economic model and which are being deployed in more and more territories, such as Pluto TV, Tubi or Samsung TV +.

The CNC expresses reservations about the continuation of the increase in the market for world rights in a context of evolution of the economic models of the platforms and the strike in Hollywood which could slow down the purchases of programs : “The very high level of sales of world rights to platforms could thus be exceptional in 2022 and decline in 2023.”