Canal+ Group’s Maxime Saada Details Long-Term Survival Plan: ‘I Don’t Want To Be Dependent on a Single Market’
variety.comBen Croll Clad in his familiar accessories of dark suspenders and tortoise-shell glasses, Canal+ Group CEO Maxime Saada cuts a decorous and professorial figure, though the two framed posters of “Scarface” and “The Godfather” that decorate his office walls offer a slightly better insight into the chairman’s inner passions. “[I follow] a logic of intensity,” Saada tells Variety. “As a payTV player, our main objective is not to broadcast content to the widest possible audience in order to lure to advertizers, nor to aim for consensus.
We want to inspire passion and fervor, because reactions of ‘not bad’ do not encourage subscriptions.” Saada is being honored at Mipcom with the Variety Vanguard Award.
Since taking the reins eight years ago, Saada has looked for new subscribers all across the globe, transforming the emblematic French brand into a significant international player that has grown from 11 million (almost entirely European) clients in 2015 to last year’s tally of 25.5 million, spread across more than 50 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Fueling this expansion has been a recent slate of acquisitions, as Canal+ has claimed a 12% stake in the Scandinavian streaming platform Viaplay and a 26.1% stake in Hong Kong-based OTT service Viu, while angling for a controlling interest in the latter service within the next few years.
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