German broadcasting giant ProSiebenSat.1 is reporting a 15% leap in third quarter revenue to €1.06 billion ($1.23 billion), driven by its advertising intake from entertainment which has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, growing 18% year-on-year in the quarter, it said on Thursday.
The company — which operates free-to-air and pay-TV channels in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and controls production group Red Arrow Studios — is now aiming for revenue of €4.45 billion to €4.55 billion ($5.1 billion) for the full year, a year-on-year increase of between 10% and 12%.
“These are the highest revenues in a third quarter in the company’s history,” Rainer Beaujean, chairman of the executive board of ProSiebenSat.1, said in a statement.
Beaujean added: “After a revenue high in the second quarter, we again achieved record revenues in the third quarter.”
He noted that in the entertainment segment, the company “not only outperformed our 2019 pre-corona level in advertising revenues in the region of Germany, Austria and Switzerland with an increase of 13%” but “also generated the highest advertising revenues in the German-speaking region in a third quarter in our history.”
The ProSiebenSat.1 chief in the prepared statement went on to underline that the broadcaster remains “the clear number one” in the German TV market in the third quarter of 2021, both in terms of viewers and advertising customers.
“Local content helps us maximize our reach and further improve monetization,” Beaujean said, citing the quality of the company’s soccer coverage, which, he said, “goes far beyond pure TV broadcasting” with new formats, live streaming, apps and websites that have “established new sports environments that we are marketing successfully.”
“We are therefore using our entire entertainment ecosystem to delight our viewers,” Beaujean said, “and at the same time to create attractive advertising environments.”
On top of that, the market outlook for 2022 makes ProSiebenSat.1 optimistic with the overall advertising market expected to grow further by 5% compared to 2021.
“We will use this to our advantage, after all, TV is still the number one medium in Germany, and we are the clear market leader,” he said.