PCCW and Canal+ have announced a strategic partnership through which the French media giant will become a significant minority shareholder in PCCW’s Asian streaming service Viu.
Canal+ will make a staggered investment of $300M in Viu, including an initial investment of $200M, resulting in a 26.1% stake. It also has an option to make a further investment and turn that stake into a controlling 51%.
In a statement, Canal+ talked expansion opportunities and plans to collaborate with Viu on premium production:
“This new strategic partnership will enable the further growth of Viu, leveraging the global strength and expertise of Canal+ through various initiatives including collaboration on premium productions and content creation, expansion of global market reach for Viu, and continual user experience improvement. The partnership will allow Canal+ to take a major step in developing Asia as its next growth engine.”
Viu is one of Asia’s leading streamers with more than 66 million monthly active users (MAU) and 12 million paid subscribers across Asia, the Middle East and South Africa. The service, which operates a combined AVOD and SVOD model, consistently ranks as the top streamer in terms of MAUs across Southeast Asia and second in terms of subscribers.
It produces a wide range of local-language drama series and lifestyle programming, with a focus on Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, and was a first mover in the acquisition of Korean content. In 2022, Viu reported $250M in revenue, representing growth of 36% year over year.
Maxime Saada, Canal+ Group CEO, said: “Canal+ already has leading market positions in Europe and Africa. We are now looking forward to developing Asia as an additional growth engine for the group. Our investment in Viu is a major step towards achieving this goal. Viu is already a business with scale, with its hybrid AVOD and SVOD business model and focus on local content, it has all the ingredients to deliver superior growth and continue to be a leading service in the region and beyond.”
Janice Lee, Viu CEO and PCCW Media Managing Director, said: “When we launched Viu, we had set our sights on creating and transforming our media business into an international play by tapping into larger addressable markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa. Having created a robust streaming business, we are excited to have the addition of Canal+ as a strategic investor to further accelerate growth by drawing on Canal+’s global strength in premium productions, content creation and distribution expertise.”
