Molotov hits 10 million subs as French SVOD and catch-up viewing grows

French OTT streamer Molotov has announced it has hit the major milestone of 10 million users. 

Molotov, which was launched in 2016 by AlloCiné founder Jean-David Blanc and Canal+ co-founder Pierre Lescure in 2016 and subsequently received funding from Sky, said that the service saw a 63% increase in time spent on the platform and an 82% increase in subscriptions during 2019.

The service offers access to over 170 linear and non-linear, free and pay channels, including over 30,000 titles refreshed on a daily basis.

In Q4 2019, Molotov announced a range of content deals with the likes of Altice- NextRadioTV, RT France and Viacom.

The startup has also announced that it has been recently selected to join the French Tech 120 index, a government-backed organisation set up to support the most promising startups that have the potential to become global technology leaders by creating favorable conditions for their development, growth and continued innovation.

Both pieces of news will likely buoy the company which was at the centre of a failed takeover bid by Altice Europe in 2019.

After months of discussions, the deal was called off after a number of Molotov investors were unhappy with the terms of the takeover. It was reported that investors wanted an all-cash purchase, but it instead would involve Altice implementing a capital increase of €10 million.

In other French news, research published by audience research outfit Médiamétrie’s showed that SVOD platforms in France now have 4.5 million daily viewers, with the TV set used by 73% of SVOD users to consume content.

Médiamétrie said that the SVOD boom was benefiting scripted programming with an extra 750 hours of content appearing in the country last year. French series, including Netflix-TF1 coproduction Bazar de la Charité, occupied 53% of the top prime time slots in 2019 compared to 13% in 2009.

In 2019, 7.8 million French people used a catch-up service to watch programmes, 13% more than two years ago.

Some 4.3 million French people watch programmes on a computer, tablet or smartphone for an average time of one hour and 58 mins, an increase of 55% in the last year.

Average daily viewing time in France last year was three hours 40 minutes on average each day per person across all households, all devices, and for live broadcasts, time-shifted and catch-up viewing, down six minutes on 2018.