A multi-year Sky and STUDIOCANAL deal will make a range of new content available and increase the market position of the two organisations

We’ve recently seen a lot of evidence of changes in the global (and therefore European) streaming market, as content owners and platform owners eye their market share as the future market develops. On a European level, the new Sky and STUDIOCANAL is a key stepping stone. Sky has platform, STUDIOCANAL has content. The press release gives some examples (quoted below).

Under the deal, STUDIOCANAL’s titles scheduled for release from January 2021 will be brought to Sky Cinema and NOW TV after their theatrical release. Customers will get access to upcoming titles including 2021 Awards hopeful Supernova, JoJo Moyes adaptation The Last Letter From Your Lover, female action thriller Gunpowder Milkshake, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy starring in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.

In addition to the theatrical slate, from the start of 2021 movies from STUDIOCANAL’s existing movie library will be brought onto Sky Cinema and NOW TV, delivering content for all movie lovers. Customers can enjoy family classics, including Paddington, and Paddington 2, A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon as well as action titles Legend and Logan Lucky and award-winning movies The Imitation Game and The Hurt Locker.

The timing of this is interest if you’ve read our recent report on the European market (here). While focused on Netflix, the research we refer to gives the following European revenue proportions:

Comcast (who own Sky) accounts for 12%, followed by Netflix at just over 6%. German public broadcaster ARD is next at around 5.7% with the BBC accounting for 4.2%, followed by the Canal (who own STUDIOCANAL) group at 3.2%

If you add the revenues together (it’s not that simple!) the Comcast/Canal size would rise to 15.2% compared to Netflix’s 6%.

While interesting, it’s also worth asking how STUDIOCANAL content gets to a wider (eg US/ Asian) market. If we had to predict (and we are) we wonder about an arrangement via Amazon Prime for non-European markets, with the opportunity there to cross-sell digital content via Amazon, something the Sky and STUDIOCANAL doesn’t provide.

We’ll keep you post on further market changes, and you can access the full press release here.