First, Netflix did a 180 on advertising. Then it pivoted into live sports. And now, in the latest move blurring the lines between streaming and traditional linear TV, the company is becoming an aggregator with plans to add French broadcaster TF1’s lineup of live and on-demand sports, news and entertainment programming to its platform in the country next summer.
The first-of-its-kind deal, which is the equivalent of an American broadcaster like ABC or NBC handing over its feed of programming, is a model that’s unlikely to be replicated in the United States anytime soon, experts told TheWrap. But, as NBCUniversal creative product director SJ Mackenzie recently put it in a LinkedIn post: Netflix’s move should have every U.S. media executive on alert.
“This isn’t a headline. It’s a flashing neon sign. While U.S. teams are still stuck optimizing bundles and measuring ‘attention,’ Europe is building the next evolution of streaming: Hybrid ecosystems that merge traditional TV, live sports and on-demand all under one roof,” Mackenzie said. “Together, [Netflix and TF1 are] rewriting distribution strategy in real time.”
Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters has said the company would use the TF1 deal as a test before exploring partnerships with other broadcasters. The streamer declined to make an executive available to interview for this story.
From anti-cable to linear TV content aggregator
While acknowledging Netflix positioning itself as the “anti-cable” was one of the key reasons it was able to grow into the behemoth it currently is and spur a wave of cord-cutters, Hub Entertainment Research founder Jon Giegengack told TheWrap that the TF1 pact is the latest evidence that the pendulum is swinging back towards the importance of content aggregation.
“There’s so much content and so many providers out there that people need some simpler, more efficient way to use them all,” Giegengack explained. “There’s a lot of headroom for even the biggest platforms to get and this is very much in line with Netflix’s ongoing plans to incorporate gaming, sports and different kinds of live events. They want to be the place that people go for entertainment of all kinds and they have to do that to grow beyond where they are right now.”
It’s also an adjustment in Netflix’s strategy outside of the U.S., with the company focusing on “stepping up co-productions with regional players, and utilizing their local prowess to bolster their local lineups,” former IFC and Sundance Channel executive Evan Shapiro added.
Netflix and TF1 have previously collaborated on co-productions like “Les Combattantes,” “L’Agence” and “Tout le bleu du ciel.” In November, Netflix, TF1 and Newen Studio teamed up on the streamer’s first daily drama series in France – “Tout Pour La Lumière” – which will be available on Netflix five days before its free-to-air broadcast on TF1.
“Netflix has come to the realization that they can no longer afford to produce originals simultaneously in multiple regions at the scale necessary to maintain their growth and leadership in premium streaming,” Shapiro told TheWrap. “At the same time, their viewership — in the U.S. and in numerous regions, including France — has flattened or they are losing share to the combination of YouTube, FAST and Disney.”
Per Nielsen’s latest Gauge report, Netflix accounted for 7.5% of the streaming category’s record 44.8% share for May, trailing behind YouTube’s 12.5% share. However, when looking at the measurement firm’s latest Media Distributor Gauge, Netflix ranked fifth for the month, behind YouTube, Disney, NBCUniversal and Paramount Global.
“In some ways, Netflix has won the streaming wars, if you compare them to other streaming services that serve mostly premium content,” eMarketer analyst Paul Verna said. “But there’s no getting around the fact that even with a lot of creator content or user generated content, YouTube is a force to be reckoned with. And as long as they’re taking up so much of the media time and so much of the ad revenue, they’re going to be on Netflix’s radar as a big competitor.”
The French Experiment
When looking at the market in France, television holds a daily reach share of 78% and TF1 has a reach share of 53%, per a recent investor presentation for its first quarter of 2025, compared to YouTube’s daily reach share of 32% and SVOD’s 17% share. When looking by age, TF1 Groupe’s portfolio has a share of 33.5% among women under 50 and a 30.5% share among 25 to 49 year olds, per the presentation.
In 2022, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the service surpassed 10 million subscribers in France. The company has since stopped disclosing its quarterly subscriber counts, but has over 300 million globally. Meanwhile, TF1 Group reaches 58 million monthly viewers through its broadcast channels and serves 35 million users on its TF1+ streaming service.
Despite being the leading streaming service in France, Netflix’s penetration currently sits at 48% of connected homes in 2025, making up 13.7 million subscribers, Ampere estimates. The firm recently surveyed 2,000 consumers, finding that 23% of respondents were TF1 users only in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 29% who were Netflix users only and 32% who used both TF1 and Netflix.
While the deal gives Netflix access to an older, more traditional linear TV audience, Ampere senior analyst Rory Gooderick said the partnership with TF1 is less about appealing to new customers and more about increasing the stickiness of its existing customers in France at a time when economic uncertainty is squeezing content budgets and consumers’ wallets.
He noted it would give Netflix more live and sports content to help reduce churn and boost the platform’s engagement as it looks to scale its advertising business. It will also engage younger viewers with a linear schedule “designed to encourage regular rather than binge viewing.” Additionally, the pact will improve the streamer’s position in a high value market where the company has seen a slowdown in subscriber growth by leveraging TF1’s catalogue and strong brand identity.
“This deal makes especially good sense in France as it is one of the last European markets where the weekly viewing time of linear TV exceeds that of subscription OTT,” Gooderick said.
In return, TF1 benefits from the increased reach and prominence of the country’s largest streaming service to boost engagement around its content and potentially recapture linear TV audiences that have been lost to streaming.
However, Omdia Media warned the partnership risks cannibalizing TF1+, which the firm forecasts will account for over a fifth of TF1’s ad revenue by 2030. In its first quarter of 2025, TF1+ advertising revenue grew 36.9% year over year to €40 million ($46.4 million), while total ad revenue was down 0.2% to €363 million ($421.5 million).
Template for future deals — just not yet in the U.S.
Experts who spoke to TheWrap all said they see Netflix’s TF1 deal as a template for future agreements.
“This helps to not only improve revenues amid a declining linear TV base, but also helps to future-proof broadcasters by migrating audiences towards a digital delivery method,” Gooderick said. “Likewise for streaming services, these deals provide direct access to popular locally produced content, helping it to engage audiences and reduce churn in high-value markets.”
Though Shapiro sees the U.K.’s Channel 4 and Germany’s ZDF likely replicating TF1’s deal, he emphasized that the economic models in the U.S. make it far less likely to be duplicated there.
“The retransmission fees that big media and local roll-ups like Tegna and Nexstar collect in the U.S. are still too big to walk away from,” he noted. “That said, if pay TV subscriptions fall below a certain level in the U.S., anything is possible.”
While Netflix has previously said it isn’t interested in news — at least for now — experts didn’t rule out the possibility that the streamer could experiment with live channels in the U.S. focused around its IP or themes of content, similar to Disney+ Streams, to drive content discovery and engagement.
“There’s definitely a market for that because we all know the use of FAST channels is growing,” Giegengack said. “The channel surfing model is something that the live streaming of FAST channels does really well, but Netflix doesn’t really accommodate that much at all.”
At the same time, Giegengack warned that Netflix needs to avoid going down the “slippery slope” of trying to be all things to all people and aggregating so much content to the point that it dilutes what made the brand unique in the first place.
“If you have too much stuff available and you make the average user wade through more things they’re not interested in until they find the stuff they really like, that’s a problem and that’s something that we know drives churn on services in general. They’ve got a history of being really, really good at managing that interface and trying to figure out how to give each person the best, most efficient experience,” he said. “But they should be conscious of not watering down their brand to the point that they become the cable dragons they slew 10 years ago.”
