French commercial broadcaster M6 Group saw a record year in 2016 with ad revenues up 4.8 per cent on 2015 to €853 million – representing 66.7 per cent of the group’s total €1.279 billon revenues, up 2.3 per cent.

Non-advertising revenues declined by 2.4 per cent to € 425.4 million, resulting from the financial drag of football club Les Girondins de Bordeaux and the end of mobile offer M6 Mobile by Orange. M6 Group’s net results jumped by 32.9 per cent to € 152.8 million year-on-year, while the average audience share passed the 10 per cent mark, to 10.2 per cent, up 0.3 point.

TV activities revenues were up 4.1 per cent to € 855.6 million contributing to the Ebitda for €159.3 million. Most of the growth is coming from the three free DTT channels, M6, W9 and 6ter along with the replay and VoD platform 6Play, that boasts 15 million subscribers.

Looking ahead, M6 wants to see content-cost reduction and it hopes to agree IPTV carriage fees, similar to what TF1 is also asking for from operators.

Meanwhile, CEO Nicolas de Tavernost, who has renewed his contract to February 2020, has said that M6 Group is not willing to acquire any new channels, but will answer to any new call for bids launched by regulatory body CSA.

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