(Image courtesy of BCE)
Crave subscriptions continued to rise for Bell Media in parent company BCE’s Q3 2025 results, despite a dip in overall year-over-year (YoY) media revenue.
In its results released Thursday, BCE reported $6.05 billion in operating revenue for the quarter, up 1.3% YoY from $5.97 billion, thanks to higher service and product revenues due to the acquisition of Ziply Fiber, offset by declines at Bell Canada and Bell Media.
The media segment dipped 6.4% to $732 million, from $782 million in the same period last year, attributed to an 11.5% decrease in advertising revenue, largely impacting traditional TV and radio, and a 5.2% decrease in subscriber revenues. The latter was largely because of retroactive adjustments to subscriber revenues last year, which increased media revenues by 13.5% in Q3 2024. The lower subscriber revenue was offset by continued subscriber growth for Crave and Bell Media’s sports streamers.
Crave’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) subscribers (those gained outside of BDUs) increased by 64% in the quarter, reaching 4.2 million by the end of the quarter, while DTC sports subscribers increased by 38%.
During the quarter, Bell launched its Crave, Netflix and Disney+ streaming bundle for customers, and made Crave’s Standard With Ads tier available on Prime Video. Bell Media announced a strategic partnership with Tubi for ad sales and content distribution.
On the sports side, the company extended its long-term rights to Winnipeg Jets regional broadcasts with True North Sports + Entertainment, and announced a long-term partnership with the Montreal Canadiens for regional broadcasts. In audio, Bell Media extended its partnership with iHeartMedia to represent its podcast portfolio.
“Despite near-term headwinds on linear advertising demand, we remain confident that Bell Media will deliver positive revenue and growth for the full year,” CFO Curtis Millen said.
BCE also reported a 34% growth in its AI power solutions for Q3, which Millen told investors was mainly through organic growth. The company had three AI-powered services as of Q3: IT service provider Ateko, cybersecurity tech Bell Cyber and AI compute project Bell AI Fabric.
“Canada is having its AI moment, and it will be distinctly sovereign,” said Millan. “Our purpose-built AI data centre business and the full-stack AI alliance we’ve assembled with other Canadian tech leaders continues to have a deep pipeline of interest, and we expect to announce more growth in this space in the coming months.”
This article originally appeared in Playback.
