WATCH VIDEO. At the end of 2018 RTL Group registered 1 million paying subscribers for its VOD platforms (mainly the pay services TV Now Premium in Germany and Videoland in the Netherlands), up 76.7% year on year.
The number of paying subscribers for TV Now Premium grew by 43.5%, mainly driven by improved product features.
In the Netherlands, Videoland recorded paying subscriber growth of 134.9%. Total subscriber viewing time increased by 229.9% in 2018. Videoland’s strong growth was primarily driven by local original content shows such as reality format Temptation Island VIPs and crime series Mocro Maffia, both of which were exclusively available.
Over the next three years RTL Group aims to grow its total number of paying subscribers to at least 3 million and to grow VOD revenue from €216 million in 2018 to at least €360 million in 2021.
“Total Video 2.0 means building local streaming champions and strengthening our content creation,” said Bert Habets, CEO of RTL Group.
“With rapidly changing consumer behaviour and the rise of global tech giants and streaming platforms, we’ve moved from a local to a global competitive landscape. At the same time, international media markets are experiencing unprecedented change and consolidation. This is why 2018 saw the start of our transformation journey to foster organic growth within our portfolio, through our Total Video 2.0 strategy.
“With this strategy we will focus on two clear priorities: building local streaming champions and strengthening our content creation. Accordingly, RTL Group will invest at least an additional €350 million to boost the expansion of our streaming services over the next three years – €300 million of which will be dedicated to content investments across all genres. As our streaming services are deeply integrated in our families of TV channels, these investments will generate sizeable additional revenue and will thus have limited impact on our operating profit. Every investment in local, exclusive content is an investment for the long run, strengthening both our linear TV channels and streaming services. In other words: we will continue to generate very healthy profit margins.
“At the end of 2018, RTL Group passed the first million mark of paying subscribers, combining the subscriber bases of TV Now Premium in Germany and Videoland in the Netherlands. We plan to start similar services in other countries. Over the next three years, we aim to grow our total number of paying subscribers to at least 3 million. Our streaming services already show very promising growth rates in a highly dynamic market – thus we will always have the flexibility to further increase our ambitions in this space. This growth will help to further diversify RTL Group’s revenue streams.
“With Fremantle we continue our push into drama production. As drama series are also key for the expansion of our streaming services, we have developed an ambitious growth plan for scripted series. Based on this growth plan, international drama productions are forecast to generate more than €500 million in revenue in 2021.”
#RTLresults for the full year 2018 are out reporting record revenues! @rtlgroup https://t.co/PmXCGsTOPG pic.twitter.com/bs1ezekcZm
— Bert Habets (@BertHabets) March 13, 2019
