{"id":379499,"date":"2026-03-11T13:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/379499\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T13:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:18:09","slug":"google-ai-deal-sky-drama-pact-unveiled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/379499\/","title":{"rendered":"Google AI Deal & Sky Drama Pact Unveiled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCanal+<\/a> has struck landmark deals with Google<\/a>, OpenAI<\/a> and Sky<\/a> over AI and English-language drama as it unveils first full-year results since floating on the London Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe French Paddington powerhouse has revealed a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud for its Canal+ app, with updates rolling out later this year. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe deal will see Canal+ \u201caccelerate the content video indexing of its extensive content library,\u201d it said, enabling \u201csmarter more personalized content recommendation.\u201d It has also taken on Google\u2019s new genAI video technology, Veo3, which it said allows for \u201ccreative unlocking\u201d of talent and producers, as it used the example of \u201crecreating historical moments from a single archival photo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCanal+\u2019s AI deal has come as big players work out how best to co-operate with growing artificial intelligence<\/a> giants. Canal+ has also partnered with OpenAI on personalization improvements to its app. This comes a few months after Disney struck a landmark OpenAI deal that saw the Mouse House invest $1B <\/a>in the artificial intelligence giant and hand over characters from\u00a0Frozen\u00a0and\u00a0Star Wars\u00a0to generative AI video app Sora. Other similar deals with big players have followed. Banijay was last week<\/a> talking up its AI capabilites after merging with All3Media. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are pleased to leverage Google Cloud\u2019s most advanced AI technologies to drive Canal+\u2019s technical innovation,\u201d said Chief Technology Officer St\u00e9phane Baumie. \u201cBuilding on a long-standing collaboration with Google, this strategic partnership paves the way for limitless possibilities. Content video indexing for Canal+ at scale gives the group a significant edge, notably by enabling us to deliver sharper discovery and\u00a0truly enhanced\u00a0personalized journeys on the Canal+ App across all our markets.\u00a0Creativity is the cornerstone of Canal+\u2019s content production.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tSky deal<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Canal+ has tied with Sky on an English-language drama pact.<\/p>\n

\n\tCEO Maxime Saada, who was unveiling the annual results, said the \u201cambitious new partnership\u201d will develop English-speaking drama. <\/p>\n

\n\tSky and Canal+ will develop at least two projects per year over an initial three-year term, we are told, which could be produced by production arm Studiocanal<\/a>. They have previously partnered on shows like Django starring Matthias Schoenaerts. Studiocanal recently hired Sky Studios exec Paul Gilbert as its senior vice-president of English-language series.<\/p>\n

\n\tCanal+ was bringing all the news on the day of its first full annual results since listing on the London Stock Exchange and buying African giant MultiChoice.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose results saw a big drop in revenue in its content division but improved profit across the piece.<\/p>\n

\n\tOverall group revenue was down 2.5% to \u20ac6.28B ($8.43B), although organic growth was up slightly, Canal+ said. Adjusted EBIT was up nearly 5% to \u20ac527M and EBIT margin was up 6 percentage points to 8.4%. <\/p>\n

\n\tRevenue in the content, production, distribution and \u201cother\u201d division, however, slid 42% to \u20ac775M, with the group putting this down to a strong 2024 that featured Paddington in Peru, Amy Winehouse movie Back to Black and TV series Paris Has Fallen. <\/p>\n

\n\tShowmax an \u201cexpensive failure\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tCanal+ has completed its MultiChoice acquisition and, most recently, shut down its streamer Showmax<\/a>. Notably, today\u2019s Canal+ results called Showmax an \u201cexpensive failure\u201d and said MultiChoice had \u201cfaced challenges\u201d of late including currency devaluation in Nigeria and strong inflation impacting content. <\/p>\n

\n\tFor next year, Canal+ will look to \u201cturn around MultiChoice and capture the African growth opportunities through the launch of a boost plan and the acceleration of synergy delivery,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

\n\tDelivery of planned synergies has risen \u20ac100M to \u20ac250M for 2026, with the \u201cdiscontinuation of Showmax\u201d flagged as an example. <\/p>\n

\n\tCanal+ floated in late 2024 on the London Stock Exchange<\/a>. Shares had been slowly rising over the past few months but this morning slid nearly 20%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canal+ has struck landmark deals with Google, OpenAI and Sky over AI and English-language drama as it unveils…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[265],"tags":[289,53169,18,117,823,19,17,307,4657,116171,37985,128],"class_list":["post-379499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-canal","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-google","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-openai","tag-sky","tag-studiocanal","tag-techline","tag-tv"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116210742580470564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}