Jumelage Between European Broadcasters And Global Streamers
jumelage /ʒuməˈlɑːʒ/ noun (plural: jumelages)
Business/Media: A strategic alliance or collaborative framework between companies or organizations, often implying ongoing cooperation rather than a single transaction.
Within just a few days, three major commercial broadcasters in the EU — ITV (UK), TF1 (France) and RTL (Germany) — each announced strategic partnerships or M&A activities with global streaming platforms. These moves underscore a broader shift in the industry: if you can’t beat them, partner with them to extend reach and somehow keep control.
Traditional broadcasting faces the same challenges across Europe. Linear TV viewership is steadily declining, especially among younger audiences. TV advertising remains under pressure and global streamers are going after the same ad dollars with growth messages towards advertisers and global and cross-product scale.
A stand-alone DTC model in the global race for attention and engagement is almost impossible to win without partnerships – unless you belong to the very small group of global streamers. So, it seems kind of obvious to enter into partnerships and we observed a wider range of approaches:
itvX & Disney+ will tackle the UK market with a mutual content exchange starting on July 17th. It is a bilateral partnership where up to 100 hours of curated content will be cross-distributed. Content focus will be around fiction and reality TV. It’ll be interesting to see how handovers between the two platforms will be handled and if a deeper commercial partnership like the one Disney has with HBO Max in the US will follow
TF1 will go down a different route with Netflix in France. Starting in 2026 TF1 will distribute its linear channels and its TF1+ on-demand portfolio via Netflix. So the global streamer will soon carry a broad local content portfolio including live sports. It will be a first for Netflix to include a full portfolio from a partner and we will closely monitor how that will be integrated in the newly updated UX.
In Germany, RTL Group announced the acquisition of Sky in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This move will create a local streaming champion with a broad content portfolio that is especially strong in sticky areas like telenovelas, reality TV and sports. The challenge will be to first get an approval from authorities like the European Commission and German Cartel Office— a decision on that is expected for 2026— and second not to lose market focus while being busy running the post merger integration and consolidation of the product portfolio.
Public Service Broadcasters (PSB) in Europe are also exploring partnerships with global streamers. Both in France and Germany, the PSB are partnering with Amazon’s Prime Video – the approaches differ again per country.
The German PSBs ARD and ZDF have been distributing their linear channels through Prime Video since 2020. Prime Video users need to seek out and add the free integration which is limited to live – no catch-up or VoD content is included.
Just recently, France TV launched a Prime Video Channel in France. This includes 5 linear channels and a broad catch-up and VoD library. The channel can be added for 0 € and lives in its own France TV section within Prime Video.
Furthermore, the German PSB have been running paid Prime Video channels already since 2019/2020 offering access to a selection of the vast PSB libraries.
After years of MVPD bundles, we see a new era starting with horizontal integrations between broadcasters and global streamers - in “all couleurs”. It is an early stage with “initial” tests to see which models will work out best. It is likely that we will see more approaches in further European markets and commercial bundles between local broadcasters and global streamers.
Thinking about the consumer – it is not clear if these partnerships help to better navigate the jungle of options within the streaming landscape – or if one-stop-shops like Prime Video will ultimately be the go-the platforms.
