Vivendi plans to launch a competitor to Netflix, covering four countries in Western Europe, in Q4 this year.
According to Le Figaro and other French media sources, it could be based in Germany in order to circumvent the cultural restrictions imposed on VOD services in France.
By doing so, it would be adopting a similar strategy to Netflix, whose European operations were originally based in Luxembourg and, since 2015, Amsterdam.
Vivendi’s proposed SVOD service would be available in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
It would be formed by the merger of three existing operations – CanalPlay in France, Infinity in Italy and Watchever in Germany, which currently have 500,000, 600,000 and 300,000 subscribers respectively.
