It’s over for Salto! French-style Netflix is closing its doors for good this Monday, March 27. Molotov, the other French streaming TV service, is taking the opportunity to attract disappointed subscribers by offering them a year free.
End clap for Salto! Dropped by all its shareholders and without a serious buyer, the French streaming platform closed its doors definitively on Monday March 27, 2023, as planned. And this is the precise moment that Molotov has chosen to make an astonishing announcement: the famous streaming TV service has indeed decided to offer one year of free subscription to former Salto customers! An obviously interested consolation gift since the platform hopes to attract and retain these abandoned subscribers who would not want to turn to American services such as Netflix, Disney +, AppleTV + and other Amazon Prime Video.
Molotov Welcome: a gift for former Salto subscribers
Valid only from March 27 to April 2, 2023, the Molotov Welcome offer only concerns customers who were still subscribed to Salto in February or March – proof will of course be required, for verification – and who were not subscribers. at Molotov last year. This formula gives access to more than 80 TV channels with replay services, including those of DTT, in Full HD quality, on two screens simultaneously. However, if the channels of the TF1 group are included, those of the M6 group are only accessible for two months from the date of subscription. In addition, recording and live monitoring are not available in this discovery offer. Once the twelve free months have elapsed, the formula will switch to the Molotov Extra offer, a subscription at 5.99 euros per month without these limitations.
End of somersault:
Salto had specified the reimbursement terms for its subscribers a month ago. Subscriberss will be “automatically reimbursed in proportion to the number of days remaining on [le] current month, or on the current year for the annual offer, directly on the associated means of payment [au] account“, indicated the platform on its dedicated help page. The offer being non-binding, those who had subscribed to the monthly subscription could already cancel. For subscriptions made via Bouygues Telecom and Amazon Prime Video, you had to go through their respective portals.
In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Salto will retain certain personal data and may therefore process it until the service is discontinued at the end of March. However, the platform will keep certain data (surveys, account information, surveys, etc.) until April 27, 2023 in order to respond to subscriber requests. Others, such as invoices, e-mail addresses and contract numbers, will be kept for ten years, in accordance with the French legal obligation. But Salto will take care to encrypt them in order to protect them.
Salto: French Netflix farewell
It was on its official website that the platform finally announced the sad news on February 13. “Unfortunately it is no longer possible to subscribe to Salto”, she indicates. “Thank you to all Salto subscribers for sharing with us their desire and enthusiasm for a Made in France streaming platform.” It is no longer possible to take out a subscription. Current subscribers, for their part, can continue to take advantage of the programs available on the platform until its permanent closure, but the offer has already been considerably reduced, like the episodes in advance of the daily series of the TF1 group, as Here it all starts And tomorrow belongs to us. Once Salto is closed, some of the programs that were available should return to the respective platforms of TF1, M6 and France Télévisions. For those that were broadcast exclusively, however, it will be necessary to wait for another platform to buy the rights.
It is not a surprise. As reported Telerama, the leader of France Télévisions, Delphine Ernotte, had convened a Social Economic Committee (CSE) on Friday January 20 in order to record the dissolution of the platform and the cessation of its activities and had announced that her group was disengaging from the platform. Regarding the dissolution of the platform, the management had explained to the staff representatives that “nothing is official yet as long as takeover offers can be examined, but we will not leave employees waiting for several months”. To save the platform, it would have been necessary a reliable shareholder to sell their shares to – an idea to which the various television groups were not closed – but, according to the informed, only a Spanish company, “Agile”, was interested in a takeover. Unfortunately, it had not really succeeded in convincing the three shareholders.
Salto: a streaming service that struggles to convince
The Salto platform was set up jointly by the TF1, M6 and France Télévisions groups in the fall of 2020, a period of pandemic and confinement favorable to the launch of a new video on demand service (SVOD) made in France. It offers to find the favorite French shows and series – like Scenes of households And HPI – and watch live TV. It also offers popular American series, such as And just like that – the reboot of Sex and the City –, Stargirl, Pretty Little Liars Or All-Americanas well as some great exclusives, such as the reunion episode of Friends And Harry Potter Return to Hogwarts, released the same day on HBO Max. We can also highlight the presence of “unreleased Salto” French productions, but they only represent a very small part of the catalog. A significant investment, but which is struggling to seduce the public, with less than a million subscribers in 2022 – for comparison, Netflix has 10 million French users.
To try to cover its costs, Salto was forced to increase the price of its subscriptions, by increasing its basic offer from 6.99 euros to 7.99 euros per month for three screens simultaneously, and by places an annual subscription at 69.99 euros. A dangerous technique because such a price can put off potential subscribers. This is more than the 6.99 euro Amazon Prime subscription which, as a bonus, offers many more services – in addition to the SVOD service, the user benefits from free and priority deliveries, from millions of music titles to listen offline, a selection of digital books and video games.
Salto: tough French and American competition
Salto suffered from heavyweight competition. Of course, the platform had to deal with the heavyweights of Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV and OCS, but also with newcomers who have a fairly extensive catalog: Paramount+ and Universal+ – the first arrived in France in December with fairly low rates, the second is expected soon. With the proliferation of platforms, the content is more and more scattered, and you have to pay more and more to access the desired programs. With widespread inflation, the public is forced to make choices. And as much to say that Salto was struggling to reach the top of the rankings…
But competition also came from Salto’s own shareholders! Indeed, TF1 had launched in November 2021 myTF1 Max, a paid formula presented as an extension of its classic free replay service. Ditto on the side of M6 with 6play max. It was therefore a safe bet that the two groups would favor their own SVOD services to the detriment of Salto. Moreover, Rodolphe Belmer, the brand new general manager of TF1, had declared in November 2022 in Letter A consider withdrawing from the Salto platform even if, officially “no decision is made” on the side of the group, as reported The world. Same story with M6, which had no “pre-established strategy.” At France TV, on the other hand, skepticism was in order. Delphine Ernotte, the president of the group, explained that she was looking for 45 million euros to complete the 2023 budget of France Télévisions, the exact sum that the public audiovisual group was to obtain for the purchase of its shares in Salto in the event of of a merger between TF1 and M6. So there was only one possible scenario left: pure and simple liquidation…