France: YouTube accused of being TV market “free rider”
May 8, 2026
From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris
As the result of a double tax reduction (66 per cent), video sharing platforms collectively pay just over €30 million in taxes to France’s creation funding public body CNC, compared to around €160 million for paid or free video services, and just under €250 million for television channels.
“They contribute only one third of their income to the taxes that finance creation and dissemination via funding public organism CNC. This is three times less than all other actors,” stated CNC president Gaétan Bruel, at the ‘la Journée de la Création’ conference on TV creation and financing in Paris.
Now capturing more than 26 million unique visitors per month in France, and hundreds of million euros in ad revenues, YouTube – the country’s primary video destination for people under 35 – was villainised as the “free rider” of the TV market.
While the CNC considers that the founding principle of the French TV model is the “appropriateness of everyone’s contribution to the ecosystem” and that this principle “is the one that is most put to the test today, at the time of free video sharing platforms,” Justine Ryst, CEO at YouTube France, rejected the idea of being “a hideaway passenger.”
“YouTube is not a broadcaster, but a video sharing platform that allows any type of creator, endemic or not, to look for new audiences,” Ryst contended, adding: “Our model is unique in the world. We share more than half of our turnover, we have redistributed $100 billion over the last four years. Saying YouTube doesn’t pay creators is bad faith.”
Based on a revenue sharing model, YouTube is seen as a “hosting platform, such as Uber and Airbnb – weakening an industry but taking no risks,” suggested Gaumont Television president Isabelle Degeorges.
The loudest voice on the subject was TF1 CEO Rodolphe Belmer, who urged French authorities to stop their “years-long and intolerable wait-and-see attitude and inertia” to help French players take on competition from the digital giants.
“The current French regulation of the sector prevents us evolving and tackling the new competitive environment, where the emergence of CTV completely changes the business model. YouTube is a very destabilising competitor for the entire sector,” Belmer asserted.
Demanding that the Google-owned platform now must “enter the cultural exception system,” he believes YouTube must now be ordered “to contribute 25 per cent of its turnover to French creation” and adopt “the logic of pre-financing content as with other players in this market.”