About Canal+ First

Canal+ First

Canal+ First was the linear television channel launched with the Canal+ Group's entry into Austria on 15 March 2022. It was the visible, scheduled face of a new hybrid offer — a streaming platform and a linear channel launched together, which the group described as a first for Austria — created in partnership with A1 Telekom Austria, the country's leading telecommunications provider. The channel offered premium European and Austrian series, films and documentaries, together with lifestyle formats, in-house productions, a music magazine and a news format aimed at young people. It later became Canal+ Action, the group's Austrian premium channel carrying films and series together with exclusive live European football, and it reaches over one million households via A1 Xplore TV, HD Austria and other platforms.

This profile covers Canal+ First as a dated channel identity — launched under that name in 2022 and subsequently renamed Canal+ Action — and the Austrian Canal+ service of which it was part. The channel's history is documented principally by the group's own press releases and by the Austrian Canal+ media centre, and this profile attributes launch claims to those sources rather than presenting marketing language as independent fact.

The partnership with A1 and the road to launch

Canal+'s Austrian entry was announced six months before it happened. The group, part of the French media company Vivendi, agreed a partnership with A1 Telekom Austria and its subsidiary A1now TV to develop a localised Austrian on-demand content offer, and the Austrian Federal Competition Authority approved the sealing of the partnership. The stated reasoning, in A1's account, followed changing viewing behaviour: linear viewing at scheduled times was receding, video on demand and mobile use were gaining, and A1, which had produced television magazines and video content under the A1now brand since 2018 and had bundled that know-how in A1now TV GmbH in 2019, wanted an international content partner for the next step.

Canal+ brought scale and a catalogue. At the partnership announcement the group reported 22 million subscribers worldwide, more than 15 million of them in Europe; by the launch announcement the figures given were nearly 24 million worldwide and more than 15 million in Europe. It also already had an Austrian foothold: since acquiring the operator M7 in 2019 it operated the satellite and internet platform HD Austria. Philipp Böchheimer was appointed to head the new Austrian joint venture between Canal+ and A1.

Launch day: 15 March 2022, a hybrid first for Austria

On 15 March 2022 the Canal+ streaming platform became available in Austria and the linear channel Canal+ First began. The group presented the combination explicitly as a new model: for the first time in Austria, a hybrid offer combining a streaming platform and a linear channel. The service was offered at a monthly fee of 8.99 euros, allowing access on three simultaneous streams, and the subscription included the Canal+ First channel.

The channel was available from launch in the television offers of A1 Xplore TV and of HD Austria, the group's own satellite offer. That twin carriage — the partner telco's television platform and the group's own satellite platform — gave a brand-new channel immediate national distribution without negotiating cable carriage town by town. The launch was the Austrian step of a wider Canal+ return to European markets beyond France and Poland, where the group began returning as a streaming service in 2022 in countries including Austria, Czechia and Slovakia.

What Canal+ First showed

Canal+ First offered a line-up of premium European and Austrian content consisting of series, films and documentaries, as well as lifestyle formats. At launch, subscribers could discover the original creation Vernon Subutex and the series Countdown Copenhagen, Fleabag and Roadkill, and the channel also offered in-house productions including a music magazine and a news format targeting young people. The wider service relied on studios and rights holders including STUDIOCANAL — described by the group as the European leader in the production and distribution of films and series — KinoweltTV, Filmtastic and Starzplay, and proposed original creations produced by the Canal+ Group in France and Poland.

The catalogue strategy was explicit: a rich selection of European films and series, international blockbusters and local productions, positioned as a strong alternative to the American platforms present in the Austrian market. Austrian cinema and series formed a deliberate pillar — the batch research records more than 250 Austrian films and series in the offer, curated by an Austrian team — and the group's Austrian media centre continues to describe a monthly selection of highlights curated by an Austrian content team for the Austrian market, including content under the STUDIOCANAL Arthaus label and Viaplay Select. This profile does not reproduce season-by-season title lists, which date quickly and belong to listings rather than to a channel history.

The Austrian team and the local-production claim

The Austrian curation is the feature that distinguishes Canal+ Austria from a simple import of a French service. The group staffed the venture locally — Böchheimer headed it at launch, and later Austrian reporting records Peter Kail appointed chief executive of Canal+ Österreich to drive growth and strategic development in the Austrian market, and Martijn van Hout speaking as country manager for the German-speaking region in the channel's distribution announcements. The offer's Austrian film and series catalogue, its Vienna-based presentation in later years and its locally produced football studio programming all belong to that localisation strategy.

Localisation also shaped the channel's advertising arrangements. From January 2024, advertising time on Canal+ First could be booked through IP Austria, the Austrian advertising sales house, which announced that the channel could be received via the Canal+ app, HD Austria, A1 Xplore TV, cable operators including Lampert, kabelplus, Liwest and Salzburg AG, and the Sky Entertainment package, reaching one million Austrian households. Distribution later widened further, with the channel added to Drei TV Plus at channel position 25 and to the Sky Austria platform.

From First to Action: sport joins the channel

The channel's identity changed when Canal+ won Austrian football rights. The group announced that it had been awarded, from 2024, the exclusivity of the best UEFA Champions League first-pick game played on Wednesday and the best UEFA Europa League or UEFA Europa Conference League first-pick game in each matchweek, together with the post-game highlights show and all three UEFA club competition finals — the premiere of the most prestigious European competitions on Canal+ in Austria. The rights cover the 2024–25 to 2026–27 cycle, and later Austrian reporting records the live rights held through a deal unveiled in late 2022, with ORF sub-licensing Champions League highlights.

With live football at its centre, the linear channel was renamed Canal+ Action. The group's Austrian materials and its advertising partners now describe Canal+ Action as Austria's premium channel offering 38 top matches of the UEFA men's club competitions per season, the best Champions League, Europa League and Conference League matches live and exclusive, highlights programmes presented from the Vienna-based television studio with experts and studio guests, and a 24-hour programme of award-winning films and series across crime, action, comedy and drama, including Austrian film highlights. The exact date of the renaming is not stated in the sources verified for this profile, so none is asserted; the rename belongs to the channel's 2024 football era, when the group's own agency material describes the streaming offer and its linear channel, Canal+ Action, together.

Distribution and the million-household reach

The Austrian Canal+ media centre states that the linear channel reaches over one million households in Austria and is available via A1 Xplore, HD Austria, Liwest, KabelPlus, Lampert and Sky; the IP Austria announcement adds the Canal+ app, kabelplus, Salzburg AG and the Sky Entertainment package to the same million-household picture, and Drei TV Plus was added subsequently. The consistency of the million-household figure across the group's own media centre and its advertising sales partner makes it the best-documented reach figure for the channel.

Streaming terms evolved with the service. The launch offer allowed three simultaneous streams at 8.99 euros a month; the group's later Austrian materials describe streaming on two devices simultaneously across five devices, web, app and television, with a download-to-go function, and the Canal+ app's arrival on Apple TV in June 2022 was announced as a milestone in the service's technical reach. This profile reports those terms as the dated claims of their respective announcements rather than as a single current price list, which only the live service itself can state authoritatively.

Position in the Austrian market

Canal+ entered one of Europe's most distinctive television markets: a small, German-speaking country where the public broadcaster ORF holds the largest audiences, where German channels take a large share of viewing, and where pay television had historically been led by Sky. Its wedge was differentiation — European and Austrian premium content under a famous French brand, sold through the country's largest telco, at a streaming price well below traditional pay-TV bundles, with a linear channel included for viewers who still watch scheduled television.

The football rights changed its weight. A first-pick Champions League match every Wednesday, a first-pick Europa League or Conference League match each matchweek and all three finals made the service a necessary consideration for Austrian football households from 2024, and the sub-licensing of highlights to ORF 1 placed its brand inside the public broadcaster's coverage as well. In market terms the linear channel's role changed with the same move: Canal+ First had been a showcase window for a streaming catalogue; Canal+ Action is a sports-and-premium channel in its own right.

The Canal+ Group behind the channel

Canal+ First's parent is one of Europe's largest pay-television and streaming groups. The group's own current Austrian summary describes it as active in more than 50 countries, with 25.5 million subscribers worldwide and 7,500 employees, and as Europe's leading producer, acquirer and distributor of films and series through STUDIOCANAL and KINO SWIAT. At the time of the Austrian launch the group was part of Vivendi; its Austrian operation also sits alongside the M7-derived platform business, including HD Austria, which the group had acquired in 2019.

That corporate context explains both the speed of the Austrian build-out and its content. A group that owns a major European studio can fill a new national service from its own catalogue, add partner catalogues such as Starzplay's at launch and Viaplay Select later, and bid for UEFA rights across a portfolio of countries at once. Austria was not a start-up venture; it was a territory launch by an incumbent European group, executed with a national telco partner.

Regulatory and consumer footnotes

Two documented episodes from the Austrian operation deserve record for completeness. The partnership itself required and received the approval of the Austrian Federal Competition Authority before its launch, as A1's announcement records. And in the service's consumer life, Austrian reporting records that Canal+ Austria was required to refund an activation fee charged to customers, following legal action by the Austrian Chamber of Labour. Neither episode altered the channel's trajectory, but both belong to its verified history as an Austrian business, and a profile confined to launch publicity would be incomplete without them.

More recently, Austrian coverage records both continuity and change in the rights market around the channel: Canal+ and ORF extended their Champions League highlights sub-licensing arrangement for a second season in September 2025 reporting, while DAZN was reported to have secured the main Austrian Champions League rights from the 2027–28 season. Those developments concern the next rights cycle rather than the channel's current one, in which Canal+ holds its first-pick rights to the end of the 2026–27 season.

Assessment and limits of the record

Canal+ First's significance is that it normalised a model Austria had not had: a streaming service and a linear channel conceived as one product, launched together by an international group and a national telco, with local curation as a selling point. Its successor identity, Canal+ Action, then demonstrated the model's second phase, in which live sport — the one content category that still reliably gathers a simultaneous audience — moved to the centre of the linear channel.

The limits of the record should be stated plainly. The principal sources for this profile are the Canal+ Group's launch and rights press releases, the A1 Group's partnership announcement, the Austrian Canal+ media centre and advertising-partner material, supplemented by trade and news reporting for the chief executive appointment, the consumer refund and the later rights cycle. Subscriber numbers for Austria specifically, and an independently measured audience share for the channel, have not been verified, and this profile gives neither. The million-household figure is a reach figure stated by the group and its sales partner, and it is reported here as such.