Salto’s general manager Thomas Follin has said despite a string of negative stories, the French streaming service is performing well.
The joint-venture between commercial broadcasters TF1 and M6 and the public broadcaster M6 has faced accusations of poor subscriber numbers, the possible withdrawal of France Televisions and concern over TF1 and M6’s proposed merger.
“We are in a booming, highly competitive environment, dominated by multi-subscription. However, in our first year, we have made a real breakthrough,” Follin told Les Numériques. “We’ve managed to move into third place in terms of growth over 2021. I’m not the one saying this, it’s the NPA Conseil/Harris Interactive OTT barometer. We are behind Amazon and Disney and ahead of Netflix, Apple TV+, etc.”
Follin told the publication Salto had succeeded in establishing itself as the French platform alongside the international services, adding that Salto had become the best-rated SVOD application on Apple’s App Store and received the award for the best entertainment application on Google Play.
Follin would not comment directly on Salto’s subscriber numbers, placed at between 500,000 by M6 CEO Nicolas de Tavernost and 700,000 by Delphine Ernotte, his opposite number at France Televisions. “What I can tell you is that we are on track with the trajectory we had set for ourselves, with an average of nearly 30 hours of viewing per subscriber per month. This performance is exceptional since I remind you that we do not have a bundle strategy and that it took us a long time to get to the various media such as Samsung, LG and other TVs.”
Getting access to the pay-TV platforms had been challenging, but he rejected the 9% estimate for the platform’s penetration. “Today, there is no reason for operators to deprive their customers of access to Salto, even though they have opened it up to all international platforms. As for the 8.4% of the market, this comes from a CNC study that compares cabbages and carrots, with transactional, VoD and SVoD. The way it has been used in the media is nonsense.”
