The hack streamers hate
Why a French startup is facing legal fire (again) from Hollywood’s biggest players
This is a reader-supported publication. Want deeper insights into Europe’s streaming wars? Unlock all our essays and expert breakdowns with a Streaming Made Easy Premium subscription.
Summer is over and so the news, deals and law suits are back! Time to dig in.
Happy weekend everyone.
📉 Telenet tackles churn
Forget bundling for bundling’s sake. Telenet Group is taking a page from the telco playbook done right, rolling out a centralised subscription marketplace (TV, mobile, broadband).
The playbook: integrate once, deliver everywhere (web, app, call center, in-store), offer bundles with true pause/upgrade/discount flexibility, and put it all on one bill.
The result? Double-digit decrease of the churn rate amongst bundled customers. Fellow European operators should want some of that action.
🛫 Catch me if you can
I’ll be on the ground in Amsterdam (for IBC 2025) from Sept 11–14:
→ Sept 11: Streaming Made Easy Live
→ Sept 12: Kicking off the day with Chris Redmond and Ben Keen at the Bedrock Streaming booth for a pod recording, then moderating two panels (The business of TV and the Power of Collaboration) at IBC with a crazy line up of execs.
→ Sept 13: Two episode recordings for The Media Odyssey Podcast (with Teresa Alonso Lopez and Chris Hock from Whale TV followed by a CTO roundtable with Simon Farnsworth (ITV) and Adde Granberg (SVT). Our new season just started: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE
→ Sept 14: We’re brewing a video series with Bedrock and then I’ll trade coffees for beers during our Irdeto x Streaming Made Easy happy hour (4pm onwards - stand 1.D51).
If you’re in town, hit me up!
🇳🇱 Not so local after all
Fabric’s latest data drop is a rock in the shoe of the « local stories » narrative : 87% of Dutch households stream, but 90% of catalogue titles come from abroad. Local content only makes up 5%. The Netherlands also has the lowest preference for local content across EMEA but is that a supply issue more than demand?
🇬🇧 BritBox & friends quietly thriving in the U.S.
The British Specialty streamer category (BritBox, Acorn TV, PBS Masterpiece) has hit 5.4M U.S. subscribers with an 18.4% CAGR, beating the Premium category (think Netflix and others) in growth.
But they have an age problem (with 56% of subscriptions from 55+), it’s 18 pts versus the general population.
As always, the rest of Antenna’s latest report is a goldmine for streaming nerds.
🇫🇷 TF1+ proves that BVOD ads can deliver attention
TF1 PUB just dropped results on its Signature format, an exclusive mono pre-roll on the Top 15 shows available on TF1+. The numbers speak for themselves:
+36% ad recall,
+21% consideration,
+10% approval,
77% average attention ratio.
And with 70% of TF1+ consumption now on CTV, it’s far from niche.
How does that track versus standard BVOD ads or VOL ads? Find out here.
Finally more 🇪🇺 FAST action
Back in July, Vodafone Germany announced the soft launch of a FAST channel hub, in partnership with Amagi. This week, Roku announced the upcoming launch of a FAST channel hub on the Roku Channel UK while Vodafone Spain chose The Channel Store to power a 30-channel FAST lineup across Vodafone TV and Lowi TV.
A year ago, I would have cheered without thinking twice but now cheer and wonder: it’s a win for consumers (more free options especially from their local telcos), it’s more scale to entice advertisers to spend but could we simply end up with too much inventory in the region? Come share your thoughts in the comment section.
Account sharing 🆚 splitting
HBO is the latest streamer to announce plans to tackle account sharing. Meanwhile Netflix, Disney and Apple TV are going after French company, Spliiit.
What’s Spliiit? Spliiit enables users to split a subscription between several strangers to reduce costs. Streamers argue that this results in revenue loss and amounts to unfair competition, especially as subscription prices continue to rise in the push for profitability.
So what now? The first legal proceedings led nowhere (notably, terms and conditions were vague on account sharing at the time). But now that platforms have formalised the household concept, requiring users to pay for bespoke sharing options, their case is stronger.
Even so, French courts have asked both sides to mediate…
Before you go, it’s comment time 💬 : Would you pay more for a plan that supports splitting? Share your thoughts below.
That’s it for today. Enjoy your weekend and see you on Tuesday for a Deep Dive edition of Streaming Made Easy Premium.