French catch-up TV firms hail Megaupload’s closure

Pascale Paoli-Lebailly ©RapidTVNews | 08-02-2012

Megaupload’s loss is very much French catch-up TV and VOD’s gain with a number of key players in those sectors reporting increased business after the closure of the illegal download service.

VOD website Imeneo.com was the first to announce a boost in sales at the end of January and legal streaming offers have also confirmed traffic growth as former Megaupload users spend more time visiting free catch-up TV services.
M6 CEO Nicolas de Tavernost explained that his group’s TV replay offers have seen their traffic rise in the last fifteen days owing to webnauts looking for US TV series. W9 Replay, the streaming offer of DTT channel W9 has been multiplied by four according to M6, as indeed has M6 Replay.
TF1 group accounts for a 40% traffic rise of catch-up TV service mytf1.fr, and also pay VOD, mytf1vod.fr. “mytf1.fr has registered more visits, more unique visitors and more pages viewed. Sales have also been higher,” the group explained in a statement adding that the illegal service had muddied the waters for the legal pay offers.
Over the first week after Megaupload’s closure, online catch-up TV service TV Replay boasted an increase of 17% in the number of unique visitors while TV series screenings increased 28%.
“People have finally discovered that they could watch interesting programming on free legal offers too,” TV Replay co-founder Patrick Suquet explained.
However, the founder of competitive catch-up TV website Replay.fr, Olivier Ruffin is not so much optimistic. “Megaupload’s closure is just a temporary blow hit to illicit viewing. But other websites are going to take the empty seat.”