ProSiebenSat.1 Media CEO Marco Giordani is all-in on a pan-European streaming service.
Speaking today at the high-end German confab Munich Media Days, he explained the rationale for launching one streaming service across the multiple European territories in which ProSieben’s parent, the Berlusconi family-owned MediaForEurope (MFE), operates.
The main benefits were lower costs, better tech underpinning the unified platform and MFE’s sales house gaining access to European-headquartered advertisers.
“The streaming platform will be the same for all five countries in the first quarter of next year,” he said. “We are spending less, and we are getting better technology. Sharing costs is the easiest part, but we are also getting revenue benefits.”
In July, MFE announced its plan to take the strongest parts of its existing streaming services in Italy, Germany, Spain and Portugal and combined them in one unified service that operates across Europe. MFE has long argued Europe’s media players are understrength against global streamers and need more scale to properly compete.
That was a logic that underpinned MFE acquiring a controlling stake in German TV giant ProSieben last year. The group, which was formerly known as Mediaset, has run channels in Italy and Spain for decades and also acquired a stake in Portuguese broadcaster Impresa, with the ProSieben takeover all giving it access to the Swiss and Austrian markets.
Long-serving MFE exec Giordani was installed as CEO a year ago, replacing Bert Habets, and today outlined the rationale behind the structural changes at the broadcaster.
“In reality, if you want to change, you need to change, and that’s the reason behind what happened last year,” he said. “Now we have a clear, long-term media company as main shareholder, and that means we have to focus on media. The rest of the company is less important, and we will try to take the maximum out of it to invest back in media.”
MFE, which was a significant minority shareholder in ProSieben before taking over, had long argued the business was hamstrung by investments in areas such as dating and e-commerce, and has focused on selling these.
RTL-Sky makeover
He also weighed in on RTL’s takeover of Sky Deutschland earlier this year, saying that the rival German broadcaster’s focus on subscription streaming meant the merger would have little effect on ProSieben, whose streamer Joyn is advertiser-funded and free.
“RTL has decided to go towards an SVOD future, while we are still on AVOD, so in specific terms, that is not really impacting us a lot,” he added. “It’s pretty hard work to integrate the two companies. We know a little bit about that, but I can imagine that for them it could be even worse.
“I think they will stay pretty rational on the market, on the content market and also on the advertising market, and I think that’s beneficial for the industry. It’s hard to think about traditional media fighting one against the other, while outside our world there is much more competition. A rational RTL is what we would like to have in front of us across the street [in Unterföhring, where both are based].”