Vivendi weighs European and Japan SVOD launches

Vivendi is weighing the launch of subscription VOD services in a number of Europe countries and Japan, according to a report by French business news channel BFMTV.

According to BFMTV, citing unnamed industry sources, the owner of Canal+ aims to differentiate its services by various means including combining video with a subscription music service, leveraging its ownership of Universal Music.

Vivendi has targeted Japan as an additional market because of its proven appetite for French content and because Netflix has yet to launch in the territory, according to the report.

Canal+ in France already offers a SVOD service in France via CanalPlay, which has about 600,000 subscribers, and also launched a service in Canada with DailyMotion in 2013, priced at C$7.99 a month.

In Germany, Vivendi’s struggling Watchever service launched two years ago. The company was reported to be mulling a sale of this last year and to have hired Merrill Lynch to look at options.

The company has also previously experimented with a combination of music, VOD and downloadable games in the form of Zaoza in France and Germany.