M6 streaming revenues up 34.2%
February 12, 2025
For the 2024 financial year, French broadcasting group M6 Group generated consolidated revenue of €1.31 billion, which it described as “stable” compared with the previous financial year.
On a like-for-like basis, the Group’s advertising revenue totalled €1.06 billion, also stable (up 0.1 per cent) in relation to 2023, including €912.3 million of Video advertising revenue, up €7.3 million (or 0.8 per cent) compared with FY 2023. This reflected contrasting seasonality for video advertising, with a 7.2 per cent increase in H1 and a 4.9 per cent contraction in H2 due to a sharp year-end decline in the video advertising market as a result of economic and political uncertainty. Streaming revenue grew significantly, up 34.2 per cent over the full year.
The Group’s non-advertising revenue benefited from the record year achieved by M6 Films and SND within a stable cinema market. Films coproduced and distributed by the Group accounted for one third of tickets sold for French produced films in 2024 and led to a 17.1 per cent increase in revenue for the Productions & Audiovisual Rights division. Conversely, diversification posted a slight decline in revenue, with the contribution from La Boîte aux Enfants (Gulli Parcs) offsetting the impact of the slowdown in the property market on Stéphane Plaza Immobilier’s commissions.
In 2024, the Group ramped up its transformation towards a combined streaming/linear broadcast model by investing €46.4 million of additional operational costs in streaming, thereby enabling it to successfully launch its M6+ platform in May. This amount includes the cost of exclusive content and the technical, marketing and launch costs for M6+.
The programming costs for the Video division totalled €518.7 million in 2024, and the Group said a limited rise of €16.1 million reflecting the broadcast of Euro 2024, investments in content for the streaming plan, and end of year savings, demonstrating the ability of its model to adjust to advertising market fluctuations.
Group profit from recurring operations (EBITA) stood at €242.1 million, reflecting investments in the streaming plan as well as the slowdown in the video advertising market over the second-half. The economic and political context weighted on advertisers’ investments after the Olympic and Paralympic Games were broadcast. Operating margin hit its target of 18.5 per cent of revenue.
The Group’s share of profits of associates was a loss of €7.1 million, due to the operating losses of Bedrock, which continued to invest in its platform, while all the Group’s other equity holdings were profitable
With an audience share standing at 12.8 per cent in 2024 (down 0.2 percentage points in comparison with 2023), M6 Group’s free-to-air channels (M6, W9, 6ter and Gulli) were flat across all audiences. Their performance on the 25-49 year old target was nevertheless impacted by the broadcast of the Olympic and Paralympic Games on public service broadcaster channels. Across the viewing public as a whole, the M6 channel’s audience share stood at 7.8 per cent in 2024. Excluding the broadcast of the Olympics and Paralympics, the M6 channel achieved the greatest growth in primetime across all audiences.
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