Crave subscriptions continued to rise for Bell Media in parentco BCE’s Q3 2025 results, despite a dip in overall year-over-year (YOY) media revenue.

BCE exceeded $6 billion in operating revenue for the quarter thanks to an uptick in Bell Canada revenues, and reported notable growth in its AI solutions business.

Below are key insights from the financial report and the company’s earnings call with investors on Thursday (Nov. 6) morning.

Overall Q3 operating revenue: $6.05 billion

YOY change: A 1.3% increase from $5.97 billion

Reason for change: Higher service and product revenues due to the acquisition of Ziply Fiber, offset by declines at Bell Canada and Bell Media.

Q3 media revenue: $732 million

YOY change: A 6.4% decrease from $782 million

Reason for change: An 11.5% decrease in advertising revenue, largely impacting traditional TV and radio, and a 5.2% decrease in subscriber revenues. The subscriber revenue 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 subscriptions: 4.2 million by end of Q3 2025, and 4.3 million as of early October

YOY change: A 24% increase from 3.4 million

Reason for change: Crave’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) subscribers (subscribers gained outside of BDUs) increased by 64% in the quarter, while DTC sports subscribers increased by 38%.

Media operational highlights: 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.

Chief financial officer Curtis Millen on media revenue performance: “Despite near-term headwinds on linear advertising demand, we remain confident that Bell Media will deliver positive revenue and growth for the full year.”

Artificial intelligence growth: BCE 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. “According to a recent survey by the Harris poll, commissioned by Bell, 75% of large Canadian businesses consider AI to be a strategic enterprise-wide priority, with 91% of them prioritizing data sovereignty. This is where Bell holds a clear advantage.

“Bell’s AI fabric is precisely engineered to meet these exact needs. 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.”

CEO Mirko Bibic on AI sovereignty: “There needs to be a very clear understanding and definition of what sovereignty means. Sovereignty isn’t just about having a data centre located in Canada. That’s not sovereignty; sovereignty is a multifaceted thing. It’s where the data is located, how data moves, who has control over the data, who has control over the action, and who has control over the governance, which is who can access everything and who has access to the keys to the technology.”

Bibic on the 2025 federal budget: “At a macro level, the budget is certainly positive in terms of having a number of initiatives industry-wide … spurring more investment in the Canadian economy is a decidedly good thing, and I think there’s a lot of pro-competitive, pro-investment initiatives in the budget that should be looked upon favourably.

“On the AI side of things … the initiatives that are outlined in the budget, the upwards of $900 million for sovereign AI and sovereign cloud, shows that this government is committed to seizing the AI moment and encouraging AI adoption. We’re at a moment in time where we need to move from AI science to industrialization, that scale across the Canadian economy using Canadian tech leaders … In that regard, it’s a good thing. AI infrastructure in Canada by Canadians for Canadians, and I think we’ll be able to capitalize on that in general terms.”

Image courtesy of Bell Media