Paris, January 10, 2017

 

Vivendi to open four CanalOlympia venues in Africa in January and February 2017

 
Vivendi will open four CanalOlympia venues in Africa this January and February in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guinea and Niger. These cinema and entertainment venues are part of a network of several dozen such venues to be deployed progressively in Central and Western Africa.

On January 11, 2017, CanalOlympia opens its doors in Conakry (Guinea), quickly followed by the opening of the venues in Douala (Cameroon) on January 18, Niamey (Niger) on February 1 and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) on February 25, starting day of Fespaco, the pan-African cinema and television festival of which Canal+ Group is one of the main sponsors.

Additional venues are due to be opened in other African countries over the course of 2017.

CanalOlympia’s offer includes 18 movie showings per week, 6 days a week, with a movie line-up usually coinciding with the French premieres. Every week, three screening sessions are reserved for movies intended for a young audience and each month a day is dedicated to the African cinema and Nollywood. Concerts by African and international artists will be organized at a later stage.

Several Vivendi group have been actively involved in the CanalOlympia launch. The venues benefit from Canal+’s historical presence and stellar reputation in Africa. Studiocanal, Europe’s leading studio in the production and distribution of films and TV series, is a major contributor to CanalOlympia’s programming. Canal+ Overseas participates in the programming of African films, in particular Nigerian movies branded as Nollywood TV. Its advertising arm, Canal+ Advertising, handles the sale of commercial spots during the screenings. Digitick, a leading player in ticketing in France, has designed a simple system suited for the African market. Universal Music Group will bring its expertise to concert organization in the future.

The CanalOlympia venues aim to facilitate access to culture and entertainment in countries that are often lacking such facilities and to stimulate talent development in Africa. They have a unique architectural design which permits them to accommodate 300 people indoors and several thousand outdoors. The premises are outfitted with state-of-the-art digital projection and sound equipment. They use solar panels and storage batteries, allowing each location to be energy self-sufficient.

 

CanalOlympia

 

About Vivendi

Vivendi is an integrated media and content group. The company operates businesses throughout the media value chain, from talent discovery to the creation, production and distribution of content. The main subsidiaries of Vivendi comprise Canal+ Group and Universal Music Group. Canal+ Group is the leading pay-TV operator in France, and also serves markets in Africa, Poland and Vietnam. Canal+ Group operations also include Studiocanal, a leading European player in production, sales and distribution of film and TV series. Universal Music Group is the world leader in recorded music, music publishing and merchandising, with more than 50 labels covering all genres. A separate division, Vivendi Village, brings together Vivendi Ticketing (ticketing in the UK, the U.S and France), MyBestPro (experts counseling), Watchever (subscription video-on-demand), Radionomy (digital radio), Olympia Production, the L’Olympia and the Theâtre de L‘Oeuvre venues in Paris and the CanalOlympia venues in Africa. With 3.5 billion videos viewed each month, Dailymotion is one of the biggest video content aggregation and distribution platforms in the world. Gameloft is a worldwide leading video games on mobile, with 2 million games downloaded per day.