Salto blew its first candle on October 20, 2021. The platform, which aimed to compete with American offers, must now take stock. She did not meet her goals.
Faced with the exponential popularity of Disney +, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the French audiovisual industry has released heavy artillery. The response took the form of a Franco-French SVOD platform, the result of collaboration between the main groups in the sector. Salto was born in October 2020, after the combined efforts of M6, TF1 and France Télévision to make it emerge.
A new offer which relied mainly on the content already offered on television channels, in early access, but which nevertheless offered some great exclusives. Among the hits made during this year, we can cite the preview of the meeting Friends as well as that ofHarry potter at the start of this year 2022. We don’t really know if this will have had a significant impact on subscriptions to the platform.
Salto does not reach his goal
At the microphone of France Inter, the president of France Television Delphine Ernotte shared the figures at the end of this first year of existence. “It is not for me to give the figures but we must be around 700,000 subscribers.” Figures below the goals she set for 2020, where she hoped to reach one million subscribers by the end of 2021.
However, Delphine Ernotte is rather confident. “She starts, she progresses. Salto has a future ”. A future that could nevertheless be achieved without France Télévision, which must deal with the merger of M6 and TF1. During an interview for Le Figaro, she had notably confided that she was not opposed to the idea of reselling Salto. “This is an option in order to concentrate our efforts on France.TV, which must be the undisputed leader in free streaming in France”. She added that a French public audiovisual platform would make it possible in particular to establish the position of the public service in the sector, in partnership with Arte, INA, FMM, Radio France. “We will need a common political vision to get there”.
New original creations to come
During her interview with Léa Salamé on France Inter, Delphine Ernotte also wanted to give some details on what awaits subscribers in the future. After the success of Germinal and Around the world in 80 days, a European-wide collaboration, Salto plans to add other new series to its catalog, mainly in the young adults category. One way to register in the same niche as Netflix and others, which have teenage series in their business. Whether that will be enough to give Salto a boost remains to be seen.
