US dominance of the subscription video on demand (SVOD) space has driven much debate over the need for European media consolidation, but major tie-ups have faced seemingly insurmountable challenges from plurality regulations through to political pressure.

Feeding the beast, rather than taking it on, has been one way to pursue scale in this context.

The surge seen in European media M&A volumes so far this year has been driven by the French entertainment groups Mediawan and Banijay, seeking bigger platforms from which to sell content to US SVOD giants like Netflix, Disney and Paramount, several dealmakers told Dealspeak.

With around 70 million subscribers in Europe out of 620 million globally, according to industry estimates, the prize for plugging content into the SVOD giants is considerable.

Yet this flurry throws greater focus on national broadcast and media brand champions that look like minnows in an increasingly global market.

Might plurality of cultural provision in fact be best maintained by European leaders coming together? How can regulators play a role in shaping a more dynamic, sustainable market? And which names look ripe as deal candidates in the shakeout that’s coming.

That something’s afoot is in no doubt.

Audiovisual deals impacting European targets hit a volume of EUR 3.44bn in 1Q26, making this the strongest quarter in the past five years, while taking the silver medal over 10 years and the bronze over 20 years, according to Mergermarket data.

And that volume haul is from just one deal with disclosed value – Paris-headquartered and Amsterdam-listed Banijay tying up its TV production arm with RedBird IMI‑owned, UK-based All3Media. The combined entity will bring properties including The Traitors, Peaky Blinders, Black Mirror and Race Across the World under one roof.

In the wake of announcing that deal, Banijay CFO Sophie Kurinckx-Leclerc told this news service there would be EUR 800m of “firepower” for the newly combined group to remain a major consolidator of the entertainment industry.

Meanwhile, KKR-backed, French player Mediawan – the producer of TV content and films such as The Count of Monte Cristo and Brad Pitt’s F1 – in January announced the pending acquisition of US producer North Road (Adolescence, Slow Horses) to diversify into English‑language content and expand its global distribution across 15 countries, including the US, UK, Australia, Turkey, France and Germany.

Both deals illustrate the major opportunity to be won building and delivering strong intellectual property (IP) to SVOD subscribers, bankers and lawyers agreed.

But they also condition how dealmakers assess the remaining European audiovisual deal landscape.

In the UK, London-listed broadcaster ITV’s production arm ITV Studios “looks high and dry and subscale to European peers” following the All3Media/Banijay deal, one media executive told Dealspeak.

With ITV Studios the jewel in the crown of ITV’s portfolio, eyebrows were raised in November when it emerged that US media giant Comcast was exploring a GBP 1.6bn move for the venerable British player’s ITV Media & Entertainment (ITV M&E) legacy broadcast unit.

Given Comcast owns pay-TV UK incumbent Sky, there is certainly a realistic prospect of realising synergies, as Dealspeak has previously explored.

Nonetheless, chasing some UK broadcast synergies looks mercurial at best and parochial at worst in the face of Warner Bros Discovery’s USD 111bn takeover approach from Paramount Skydance.

It’s plausible to argue not only that Comcast needs to hoover up more IP, but also that ITV Studios’ standalone future looks more uncertain now that Banijay and All3Media have opted to join forces, rather than either party moving for the UK player.

It would be “no surprise” if the delay in moving from an indication of interest in ITV M&E towards a firm offer reflected Comcast reconsidering whether to bid for the whole of ITV, including the ITV Studios arm, the media executive argued.

If the deal progresses just for ITV M&E, group CEO Dame Carolyn McCall still perhaps deserves some credit for seeking to get the barnacles off the boat. Europe’s linear broadcast TV assets face an uncertain future as the VSOD operators and internet platforms such as YouTube and TikTok absorb more viewer hours.

In order to maintain multi-language output across Europe, some might suggest plurality could best be served by consolidation that creates more sustainable pan-continental players. That may require a shift in stance from European regulators when considering media plurality.

Bertelsmann-owned RTL Group, which broadcasts output in German, French and Luxembourgish, will certainly be hoping the European Commission (EC) takes a more holistic view of the linear TV advertising space for its acquisition of Sky Deutschland, notified last month.

It’s an open question if the agency will be forthcoming.

Just last week, Carlotta Reyner Fontana – director of the department within the EC’s DG Competition responsible for information technology, communications and media – told a conference in London that “mergers […] can diminish the diversity of choices available to consumers”. Media plurality will feature in the EC’s eagerly awaited merger guidelines, which are “not a mere technical update”.

This may not be hugely reassuring to dealmakers – and reflects the kind of thinking shown by French national regulators in 2022, when Bouygues-owned TF1 and RTL’s M6 saw their merger efforts come apart over fears of dominance in the TV advertising market. Dealmakers tried in vain to convince the French watchdog to adopt rules to facilitate the emergence of a European champion able to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney.

Yet US streaming services now generate revenues from advertising and live sports events, meaning there are more arguments to deploy to the EC that it should take a “holistic” approach to the broadcasting landscape, a source familiar with the Sky Deutschland deal told this news service last July.

Indeed, Comcast’s Sky and ITV M&E would account for close to 70% of the traditional TV advertising market but would count for less than 20% of a broader video advertising market if regulators stop looking “in the rear-view mirror”, former ITV chairman Sir Peter Bazelgette told Dealspeak just before Christmas.

If these arguments bear fruit, the success of RTL/Sky Deutschland could help to revive the TF1/M6 tie-up, two French competition lawyers suggested – though given the latter only received an updated broadcasting licence in May 2023, any such deal would require government intervention, as the law currently states ownership cannot change in the five-year period following a renewal.

There is French parliamentary support for such a change, but rolling political crisis and the recent focus on passing a budget have pushed any change closer to what is likely to be a fraught presidential election campaign in 2027.

While that tussle will undoubtedly be box office gold, it’s a further reminder that media ownership remains a hugely contested and political subject.

Dealmakers wishing to shape Europe’s media landscape will need as never before to persuade legislators and regulators that concentration of ownership can continue to deliver diversity of provision.