Vivendi pins hopes on Ivorian gangsters
On a muddy side street in Abidjan, Alex Ogou directs his cast of young locals in a TV drama about gangsters in Ivory Coast that French media giant Vivendi hopes will help revive its fortunes.
is the first original series produced in Africa by Vivendi’s pay-TV company Canal+ and is part of a drive to attract viewers in Africa in the face of growing Chinese competition and as subscribers at home cancel contracts.
Canal+ has lost 1.3-million individual subscribers in mainland France since 2013 due to stiff competition for rights to sports events, series from upstart rivals and the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.
At the same time, Canal+ added twice as many subscribers in Africa, now its second-largest market.
Rights to European and African soccer have long been a drawcard in Africa, and Canal+ has also invested heavily in locally produced content. But unlike the telenovelas and tales of witchcraft that account for an outsized portion of African TV consumption, tells the story of a gang of youngsters in 10 episodes of 52 minutes.
Shot mainly in a bustling sprawl of open-air markets and run-down panel-beater shops in the working-class Yopougon district, the series will debut on Monday. “Africans want us to address them directly and not offer them programmes that reference things they don’t know, just because that’s what’s shown in Paris,” says Fabrice Faux, Canal+ international’s chief content officer.
“The African public wants things made by them, for them and, if possible, on site.”
Vivendi said in February that Canal+ aimed to add 1.5-million African subscribers by 2020 to bring the total to 5-million. With more Africans buying TVs and streaming services not widely accessible due to high data costs the continent is fertile ground for satellite payTV companies to provide original content and generate customer loyalty.
At least two more Africanproduced series are in the works: a Senegalese police drama called and an action series,
that Canal+ is co-producing with a Moroccan station.
Series are cheaper to produce in Africa than in Europe or the US, sometimes by a factor of 40. producer Karamoko Toure says it cost about $1m to make. In September it became the first Francophone African series to win an award outside the continent at the TV Fiction Festival in La Rochelle, France.
Canal+’s success in Africa, where it has nearly 4-million subscribers across more than 25 countries, contrasts with its struggles in France and largely stable business in its other main markets, Poland and Vietnam.
Canal+ is Vivendi’s secondhighest grossing company behind Universal Music so its welfare is key. In 2015, the haemorrhaging of French subscribers from Canal+ became so alarming Vivendi said it could not finance the company’s losses in the long run. In 2017 it said a turnaround plan emphasising themed packages had staunched the bleeding: sales were growing again, cancellations were declining and partnerships with mobile operators such as Orange and Bouygues Telecom were profitable.
Even so, Canal+ has shed nearly 200,000 subscribers in France over the past year. In May, it lost out on broadcast which rights in sent France Vivendi for ’the s shares national soccer league for 2020-2024, tumbling 5.5%.
One advantage Canal+ has over new entrants is strong brand recognition built up over three decades in Francophone Africa, where a white Canal+ dish is a status symbol.
“Canal+ and its satellite dish are prestigious,” says Ndeye Diagne, MD at marketing research firm Kantar in Abidjan. “They must not lose that.”
Originally produced comedy and news programmes, as well as A+, an all-Africa channel Canal+ launched in 2014, enjoyed success. It carries a range of African telenovelas, which are heavily advertised on billboards around Abidjan.
The move to feature-length dramas such as is a leap into the unknown, but French-Ivorian director Ogou thinks it will resonate widely. “People are looking for things to watch that concern them ... stories in which people can recognise themselves.”
Success in Africa has not come easy. To help attract more subscribers, Canal+ slashed prices about five years ago, Faux says, without providing figures. According to company data, the average African subscriber brings in less than half the revenue of a French customer and Africa still only accounts for 10.6% of Canal+ revenues.
Canal+ also faces growing competition from Chinese rival StarTimes, which began operating in Africa in 2002 and is pushing deeper into Francophone markets.
With nearly 10-million subscribers across 30 African countries, it is challenging the long-time dominance of Canal+ in French-speaking countries and MultiChoice’s DStv in Anglophone markets.