Rome: Canal+ Group’s acquisition run has pushed the French media group past 40 million subscribers, and Anna Marsh says that scale is only part of the point. The Studiocanal CEO and Canal+ deputy CEO/chief content officer framed the wave of deals as a way to bring in people who “challenge the status quo” while the business moves “so fast.”
M&A as a mirror
Speaking Wednesday at Rome’s MIA Market, in conversation with MIA head Gaia Tridente, Marsh pointed to AI, U.S. consolidation and the blurring of pay TV and free TV as pressures pushing Canal+ to keep questioning itself. “Nobody has all the answers,” she said. Expanding through acquisitions is, in her words, “truly enriching.”
The deals behind 40M
The deal sheet explains the subscriber number. Canal+ took a majority stake in Rome’s Lucky Red in February, picked up a 34% stake in UGC earlier this year, and completed a $2 billion takeover of South African pay-TV group MultiChoice.
- 40 million+: Canal+ subscriber base following MultiChoice.
- $2 billion: value of the MultiChoice takeover.
- 34%: Canal+ stake in French studio and cinema chain operator UGC.
- Majority stake: Lucky Red, the Rome-based producer-distributor.
More than half of the subscriber base is now English-speaking, driven by MultiChoice’s reach across Africa.
Africa is a content theatre, not a market
Marsh tied the Africa expansion directly to production. The apartheid-era drama The Road Home, starring Cynthia Erivo, Thabo Rametsi and Guy Pearce, wrapped shooting in South Africa, while season three of the Canal+ original Shadow Has Fallen wrapped in Cape Town. Marsh said entering a market with South Africa’s potential calls for “a strong content strategy,” with Studiocanal at the centre.
What derisks the slate
Book IP is one answer. The group’s Studiocanal Stories label, launched in 2024, focuses on adaptations with built-in audiences; Marsh called Paddington its biggest IP and noted it began as a book. Optioning known IP “allows us to relax a little bit” and put “more money and more data” behind decisions, she said.
Talent still matters too. Upcoming Apple Studios-Studiocanal horror What Happens at Night, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, is “a bit of a slam dunk” in Marsh’s view. But she warned that audiences, especially Gen Z, keep raising standards: “there’s just no room for error.”
For media planners and entertainment marketers, the practical read is that subscriber mix is becoming as important as subscriber count. An English-speaking African base changes which audiences Canal+ will monetise next, and where its local originals are likely to travel.
Source: Variety
