Challenging economic conditions for the European content landscape have reignited interest in a potential merger of French commercial broadcasters M6 and TF1 which had previously been abandoned. First announced in May 2021, plans to merge the companies failed during 2022 due to European regulators citing concerns about the merged group’s dominance in the local market. However changes to European regulatory frameworks in recent years, and indeed the wider TV and video landscape, have meant that a potential merger is back on the table.

Should this go ahead, the new entity would be among the top 10 largest spenders on content for audiences in Europe’s ‘Big 5’ markets (including global streamers as well as locally-based players), generating 15% of the total ‘Big 5’ TV advertising market. This would put it on par with MFE's current market share as the market's leader, though below the level expected should MFE’s acquisition of ProSiebenSat.1 go ahead as outlined previously. 

The concentration of spend and revenues becomes starker when focusing purely on the French market, as TF1 and M6 combined would account for nearly one in every five Euros spent on content for local audiences, and generate almost three-quarters of France's TV advertising market. This would be the largest share of any 'Big 5' advertising market generated by a single company (the next largest, Mediaset’s operations in Italy, accounts for 57% of local TV advertising).

The consolidation of these two broadcasters would enable the creation of more quality French programming, and help protect the local media landscape from the increasing influence of global online video players, in line with other consolidation efforts made by other regional players. Global streamers, including Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, have rapidly expanded their European market presence since launch, and have increased overall spend on TV content for Big 5 audiences by nearly 26x in the decade since 2016, expected to reach €11.6bn in 2025. Meanwhile, the French content market has remained comparatively static: Spend by local companies has grown by only 3.5% in the decade since 2016, with spend in 2025 currently anticipated to reach €6.2bn.

This demonstrates how in order to remain competitive with global services’ online content libraries and massive spend capabilities, European commercial operators are now seeking greater scale through partnerships and local mergers and acquisitions to expand their total revenues and production resources. These will ensure their business models remain stable through the production of high-budget and high-quality TV programming that will attract and retain viewers, and help them weather current macroeconomic uncertainty.