Netflix signaled its willingness this week to make a notable expansion of its live streaming efforts with a surprise deal to stream the large French commercial broadcaster TF1 in France.
While Netflix has been expanding its offerings of live sports and events, the deal for to offer a live feed of TF1 marks the first time Netflix has committed to a 24/7 live feed, explained LightShed Partners analysts’ Richard Greenfield, Brandon Ross and Mark Kelley in a note to investors.
“Consider TF1 a French experiment,” they wrote. “We’ll learn for the first time if a meaningful number of consumers want to watch live TV beyond sports and news on streaming.”
TF1 won’t launch until the summer of 2026, they stress, adding that investors should not “expect TF1 to be a template for other markets anytime soon. If it does work for Netflix, it would likely be replicated in international markets” but not the U.S.
“France (and other European countries) is also quite different than the US broadcast TV market, as there are no affiliate TV stations,” they point out. “TF1 is a singular TV station that operates throughout France. Netflix’s TF1 deal cannot be replicated in the US, where Netflix would need agreements with all of a broadcast network’s local station groups to incorporate local programming such as news and sports. That would be torture and hard to imagine ever happening.”
That said, they think the launch could be a win for both parties. “TF1’s scale in France is akin to aggregating ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC together [and] TF1 dwarfs everyone else on linear TV in France,” they argue. “Given that TF1 and TF1+ are free to all consumers in France, and the fact that Netflix will help meaningfully drive viewership of TF1 linear and on-demand programming in France, boosting ad sales, we suspect the cost of the deal is quite reasonable. There is also a meaningful brand benefit to TF1 being associated with Netflix that likely helps them acquire content in the future…Since France is one of Netflix’s 12 ad tier markets, they likely want to use TF1 to further accelerate overall ad sales.”
