Series and digital business help RTL increase revenues
Although revenue from traditional TV advertising has declined, the number of online subscriptions to its in-house streaming service has risen significantly: The RTL media group has been able to expand its business despite ongoing structural changes in the television market.
Sales in the first three quarters of 2019 increased by 2.8 percent to 4.6 billion euros, the media group announced. Information on profit was not provided. Growth was driven by digital businesses, which include the German streaming service "TV Now" and the Dutch "Videoland" - the number of paying subscribers rose by 50 percent to 1.4 million.
With "TV Now," RTL wants to establish a mainstay separate from traditional TV: People want to watch more and more shows on demand online instead of following the TV schedule.
Compared to the U.S. giants Netflix and Amazon Prime, the German streaming platform is still small, but the trend is upward. In-house productions include not only reality formats like the dating show "Prince Charming," but the channel is also trying its hand at dramas, such as "M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder" based on the classic 1931 Fritz Lang film.
Including its Dutch counterpart "Videoland" as well as other services in other countries, video-on-demand revenue in the first nine months of 2019 rose by 24 percent year-on-year to EUR 183 million - so with a share of 4 percent of Group revenue, it is still a niche.
Series flourish - TV shrinks
Another mainstay is the production company Fremantle, whose business also grew strongly - by 16 percent to 1.23 billion euros. The company produces series that are also sold to competitors - for example, "American Gods" can be seen on "Amazon Prime.
With this business, RTL also wants to become less dependent on the traditional television business. The latter's revenues - i.e., the RTL Group's channel businesses - reportedly fell by 2 percent to around EUR 3.2 billion.
The decline was due to portfolio changes - for example, rights holder Universum Film was sold - and to falling advertising revenues. The extent to which advertising revenues shrank was not communicated. According to RTL's presentation, these revenues at least performed less poorly than the market, which RTL estimates was down 3 to 4 percent.
RTL Group is based in Luxembourg. The subsidiary RTL Deutschland, with a total of about 4,200 employees, has its headquarters in Cologne. (SDA)
