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Orange seeks partner for Orange Sport
Pascale Paoli Lebailly
French telco Orange will no longer engage alone to get the TV rights of French football League One, and is now also seeking a partner to share a stake in TV channel Orange Sports.
Owner France Télécom's new CEO Stéphane Richard opened yesterday a change in Orange’s content strategy as he also extended this move towards partnerships in the cinema series bouquet of channels.
Orange channels were all launched between August and October 2008 at a time when competition with pay-TV group Canal+ was very intense. In January 2008, Orange paid €203m to get the rights for France’s League One soccer for the 2008-2012 seasons.
“Our goal is not to remain the only shareholder of these TV channels, because it is no longer in line with our new content strategy,” Richard explained yesterday at a press conference in Paris. “I hope we will find this partner before the launch in 2011 of next League One call for tenders,” he added.
Offered exclusively to Orange’s triple-play subs, these channels have attracted 800,000 subscribers to date. But it has not succeeded in bringing new subscribers to the internet offer, one of the goals of the original content strategy.
Pascale Paoli Lebailly
French telco Orange will no longer engage alone to get the TV rights of French football League One, and is now also seeking a partner to share a stake in TV channel Orange Sports.
Owner France Télécom's new CEO Stéphane Richard opened yesterday a change in Orange’s content strategy as he also extended this move towards partnerships in the cinema series bouquet of channels.
Orange channels were all launched between August and October 2008 at a time when competition with pay-TV group Canal+ was very intense. In January 2008, Orange paid €203m to get the rights for France’s League One soccer for the 2008-2012 seasons.
“Our goal is not to remain the only shareholder of these TV channels, because it is no longer in line with our new content strategy,” Richard explained yesterday at a press conference in Paris. “I hope we will find this partner before the launch in 2011 of next League One call for tenders,” he added.
Offered exclusively to Orange’s triple-play subs, these channels have attracted 800,000 subscribers to date. But it has not succeeded in bringing new subscribers to the internet offer, one of the goals of the original content strategy.