Broadcasting German-speaking Segment

The Broadcasting German-speaking segment is where ProSiebenSat.1 Group bundles all its TV activities and the distribution business. The Group is facing new challenges in the wake of digitalization, while attractive growth opportunities are simultaneously arising in the television business.

• Fragmentation of the TV market: Digitalization means that there is an unlimited number of broadcast frequencies, so there are now significantly more stations on the German TV landscape than there were at the turn of the millennium. In 2000, an average household in Germany could receive 36 free TV stations; today it is 74. The set of large, familiar TV brands is largely the same, but numerous smaller special-interest stations focused on specific target groups have come onto the scene. ProSiebenSat.1 Group is benefiting from the fact that it recognized this trend early and helped to promote it. The Group has launched three new free TV stations since 2010 in the shape of sixx, SAT.1 Gold, and ProSieben MAXX, and one more, kabel eins Doku, is to follow in fall 2016. Expanding the station portfolio allows the Group to reach new audiences and advertising customers. The Group gained 139 new advertising customers in 2015 alone. Television remains the most popular free-time activity in Germany and the most-used medium with 259 minutes a day. Thanks to technical advances, such as television in HD quality, large screens, and the integration of Internet functionality, the medium is gaining in attractiveness and diversity.
• Digitalization of TV advertising: ProSiebenSat.1 Group is Germany’s most innovative TV marketer with its subsidiaries SevenOne Media and SevenOne AdFactory. The Group is continuously developing new forms of advertising and also designs individual campaigns for advertising customers that spread to all media platforms from the core medium of TV. In order to increase advertising impact, the Group is consistently integrating its television business with digital entertainment. At the same time, ProSiebenSat.1 is looking to the use of innovative technology and thus opening itself up to new growth opportunities on the TV advertising market. In 2015, ProSiebenSat.1 was the first TV corporation in Germany to broadcast advertising spots delivered individually to TV households according to location using the technological standard “Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV” (HbbTV). The Group is working on using HbbTV to address viewers personally with TV spots in the future. This “addressable TV” thus combines the high reach of television as a mass medium with the advantages of the Internet and also provides an opportunity for interaction. The availability of HbbTV is growing dynamically and has already passed critical mass in Germany: According to GfK, over 16 million HbbTV-ready television sets have been sold in Germany since 2011.
• Distribution of content: The topic of distribution has become much more significant with the diversification of transmission and reception methods. ProSiebenSat.1 Group therefore has long-standing agreements with all major distribution partners such as Kabel Deutschland and Unity Media. At the same time, the Group cooperates with numerous digital platform operators such as Zattoo and Magine. The Group is thus extending its reach and securing the distribution of its content in the world of digital media. In addition, the Group has tapped into a new, dynamically growing business area via the distribution of its HD stations.