French TV exports hit £182m as co-pros soar

French export body Unifrance and funding agency the CNC have unveiled a largely positive picture for the country’s 2024 TV exports at Le Rendez-vous in Le Havre.

The data showed that international sales of French shows were stable last year, recording a 3% revenue increase to €209.6m (£182m).

The figure includes a fall in animation and documentary revenue, but Cécile Lacoue, director of research at the CNC, pointed out that sales remained at a high level historically, with 2024 marking only the fourth time that international sales have exceeded the €200m mark.

As for international pre-financing, investment through pre-sales and co-productions soared, with 2024 proving to be a strong year for French production in terms of volume.

Non-French contributions to international co-productions were up nearly 59% year-on-year to €116m, while pre-sales, which had endured a significant drop in 2023, recovered in 2024 by more than doubling to €75.4m.

As a result, France’s total export revenue reached a record €401.2m last year, with scripted fuelling growth.

Scripted injection

Looking at sales only, French drama continued to be the genre generating the most revenue, up 0.9% to €75.2m, its second-best year after 2022.

This was mostly thanks to established IPs such as light crime series HPI, Bright Minds and Deadly Tropics, as buyers look to play safer, Unifrance’s director of audiovisual, Sarah Hemar, said.

Animation, formerly the champion of French exports, continued to see sales dwindle, dropping nearly 10% to €46.1m last year, although pre-school content continued to fare well, as Hemar stressed.

This is the fourth consecutive year the genre has been down, following some strong years between 2016 and 2020. North America, once a major buyer of French animation, bought 37% less, with a total of just €2.7m

Documentary sales were also down slightly to €44.3m, although this follows two strong years, and the genre remains above its 10-year average. With fewer linear programming slots for documentaries at international broadcasters, buyers are increasingly trending towards local content.

Another noteworth trend was the rise of multi-territory deals, which have grown 25% to €57.9m, marking their biggest year ever alongside 2022.

They mostly concern non-linear rights (81%), with data showing a notable shift away from worldwide deals, which are no longer in demand. Buyers are now looking for rights packages covering a specific region or selected territories.

Demand for non-linear rights is also on the rise and made up almost 41% of total sales revenue in 2024, up from 31% in 2023. This was mostly thanks to AVoD rights, which rose 2.9 percentage points to make up 9.6% of total sales.

Although 2024 figures are robust, the market is becoming more and more complicated, distributors have warned, with the first half of 2025 proving difficult.

Emmanuelle Jouanole, managing director of Terranoa, stressed that a structural modification of the industry is underway, which also makes business more challenging.

Distributors have also highlighted that buyers are more risk-averse, decision-making processes are longer, and that there is also an enormous amount of content on the market, meaning more competition.

Jouanole explained that selling now requires a greater marketing effort. “Fragmentation is everywhere. SVOD players are buying less, and they were the ones who paid the best. Non-linear development is good, but not necessarily for our pockets,” she added.