Canal+ targets web with sports content

The Canal+ interactive facility has done very well on the web. The subsidiary is pursuing its development and is increasingly able to provide more sports choices for Internet users. It plans to become an extension of the brand on the web. 

Fabienne Fourquet is the new media content director for Canal+. Having spent 10 years in the US where she worked for A&E Television Networks, she joined Canal+ in 2010 and subsequently took charge of the future of the Internet subsidiary of the audiovisual group.

“Today, we can say that a third of our videos are created specifically for the Internet. The other two thirds are sourced from other TV channels belonging to the group,” she explains.

The long-term objective of Canalplus.fr is the self-financing of web-only programmes through advertising.

One must admit that this seems quite feasible considering its excellent website traffic figures. With more than 50 million videos viewed each month (source: Médiamétrie) the website is ranked 5th behind Youtube, Dailymotion, TF1 and Megavideo.

Canalplus.fr offers numerous supplementary sports programmes in relation to football and rugby broadcasts on Canal+, such as programmes on premier league forecasts. It is also chasing the urban 15-25 year old market with Canalstreet.fr, where the largest range of action sports such as sliding sports, BMX racing, US sports and more can be viewed. During the last X-Games held in Aspen, more than 50 000 people were able to watch the event live in the middle of the night, in addition to the daytime broadcasts on Sport+.

When it comes to filming and recording, the same techniques and service providers are used as for broadcasting on the Canal+ channels. However, the video compression methods and the servers are specific to Canalplus.fr.

The two-tier server architecture consists of a node operator (SFR, the French phone operator owned by Vivendi, a Canal+ shareholder), and a service provider, Akamaï, that replicates content information and makes it accessible to Internet users worldwide via its CDN (Content Delivery Network).

It’s been a year since the MP4 format has been adopted, as it is compatible with all types of screens.