Netflix has struck its first-ever live TV deal, teaming with French broadcaster TF1 to offer five of its linear channels, as well as on-demand, across France on Netflix starting in the summer of 2025. The deal has the potential to reshape how streaming platforms blend scheduled and on-demand viewing — and, potentially, how global media partnerships may play out in the future.
Why This Deal Is a First for Netflix
Netflix will offer live linear TV channels for the first time in its history.
The company this month announced a multiyear deal to stream TF1’s five channels, as well as its on-demand library, directly in Netflix’s app for French subscribers. This is a dramatic departure from the identity Netflix clung to in its early days as a strictly on-demand service.
In a bit of spin, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters portrayed the move as two styles in one: meshing Netflix’s algorithmic discovery with TF1’s old-school appointment-viewing mainstays, such as:
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- The Voice
- Daily soaps
- Live sports broadcasts
- Primetime entertainment
With 94 million monthly users on Netflix’s ad-supported tier, the company views live television as a high-attention marketing vehicle that can supercharge ad revenue.
Why Is TF1 Teaming with Netflix?
Traditional viewership for TF1 continues to plummet as more and more French households abandon its broadcasts in favor of digital media.
What does TF1 gain?
A lot:
- Reach 58 Million Linear Viewers and 35 million On-demand users.
- Deeper penetration among younger, more digital-first viewers
- New ad flows through Netflix’s fast-growing ad business.
- Wider exposure, so long as its aspect remains free-to-air
The deal reflects an increasingly common trend: broadcasters collaborating with global platforms to stay competitive in a rapidly changing landscape while not forsaking their origins.
Is This the Model for More Countries?
People close to the industry (if not inside the U.S.) believe so.
Why Europe may see more deals
European broadcasters have fewer robust proprietary streaming giants and greater rivalry from global platforms. In a Netflix partnership, the immediacy of scale.
Why the U.S. is unlikely
American networks like NBC, Disney, CBS, and Fox have created their own streaming homes (Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, etc.).
Their desire to hand Netflix their linear channels is almost zero.
France is a test case for now, and its success or failure may dictate how Netflix operates next in the UK, Germany, and elsewhere where linear TV still matters culturally.
What Does This Mean for the Future of Streaming?
Netflix is not only on demand.
By combining live, scheduled TV with Netflix, the service is inching towards a cable-style bundle — but with superior discovery, personalization, and ad targeting.
Sellers of goods and services, sure enough, get what they want: eyeballs.
Live programming consistently attracts higher engagement, and that is precisely what Netflix needs as it increasingly leans into its ad-supported business.
Broadcasters are adapting to survive.
Deals like this help traditional TV networks connect with tens of millions of viewers they have lost to streaming — without abandoning their DNA altogether.
It might serve as a model for the next decade.
If it succeeds, the TF1 partnership could serve as a model for how streaming and traditional media can coexist, melding the old-school reliability of linear TV with on-demand convenience.
