LUXEMBOURG (ANP) – Media company RTL Group is suffering from advertisers who spend less money on television spots. Due to the poorer economic prospects, many companies are more careful with their marketing expenditure, and the Luxembourg parent company of channels such as RTL 4 and RTL 5 is noticing this. The influx of new subscribers for the streaming platform Videoland was a bright spot.
Partly due to the advertising dip, turnover fell by almost 7 percent in the first nine months to just under 4.7 billion euros. RTL is now more gloomy about the rest of the year. The company no longer expects an increase in revenues. Instead, RTL expects a slight decline in turnover. The company has also become more negative about operating profit.
In addition to the ailing advertising market, RTL also suffered from lower sales of TV programs by its own production house Fremantle. In recent years, RTL has increasingly focused on the streaming services market, which also requires significant investments in the underlying technology.
This is currently driving growth for those streaming platforms. For example, the number of paying subscribers at Videoland increased by more than 16 percent to almost 1.3 million. Together with the increase in subscribers for RTL+, this generated 263 million euros in streaming revenues between January and September, 21 percent more than a year earlier.
