Vivendi’s online video platform, Dailymotion, is being redesigned and a new version will be launched in April, said Dailymotion chairman Maxime Saada.
“We are rebuilding the platform from floor to ceiling. We cleaned up the explicit content, we removed the robots that pollute the audience, and we now have a sound basis on which we will be able to restart the project,” Saada at a luncheon organised by l’Association des journalistes médias.
Dailymotion attracts 300 million visitors per month, and was acquired by Vivendi in 2015. Due to restructuring the operation, about half of the number of employees have left the company, mainly in the US.
Speaking about the situation at Canal+, Saada, who is also managing director of the Canal+ group,deplored “big problems of piracy in France”, a phenomenon which he said it costs more than 500,000 subscribers to Canal +.
To try to win back subscribers, Canal+ is now offering cheaper subscriptions, starting at EUR20 a month, which so far has attracted 20,000 new subscribers.
Asked about the competition of SFR, whose SFR Sport OTT package is now to all internet users, Saada said the “competition was real” but that it was “small” compared to the challenges posed by Apple, Amazon, Google , Netflix Facebook and piracy, which he called “the invisible enemy”.
