International sales of French programs abroad performed well in 2022 with a business volume of nearly 215 million euros, up 15.4% compared to 2021. And within these international sales, the category worldwide rights sales reached 57.9 million euros, or 27% of total sales for the year.
Sales of world rights concern two main categories of activity: on the one hand, sales of TV, video and TV5 world rights for 16.6 million euros, and on the other sales of streaming rights for 41, 4 million euros, or 71% of the total worldwide rights.
Sales of streaming rights are a real opportunity for French companies, but the CNC is careful to point out that “profound changes in marketing practices. Sales of worldwide rights may imply a freezing of all commercial potential over several years, given the exclusive nature of the rights sold for a given period. » In 2022, 71.5% of these worldwide rights relate to non-linear rights: VOD and SVOD but also AVOD and FVOD, compared to 52.8% in 2021. Combatantes and Vortex, they increased by 90.4% in 2022 to €41.4 million, almost double that of 2021.
The sector that generates the most activity is SVOD with a level of sales of 27.4 million euros, up 104% compared to 2021. At the same time, TVOD increased by 721%, but at a particularly low level of activity: 500k euros. The surprise of the year 2022 comes from AVOD. In 2022, AVOD revenues increased by 62.6%, to €12.2 million, i.e. 21.2% of worldwide rights sales, compared to 18.3% in 2021. AVOD is exploding due to the proliferation of platforms based on this economic model and which are deployed in more and more territories, such as Pluto TV, Tubi or Samsung TV+.
The CNC has reservations about the continued rise in the world rights market in a context of changing platform economic models and the strike in Hollywood, which could slow down program purchases: “The very high level of worldwide rights sales to platforms could thus be exceptional in 2022 and decline from 2023.”