Morning also from my side, welcome to our analyst call. Today, we will be discussing the results for 2019 and our outlook for 2020. 2019 was a year of good progress in transforming ProSiebenSat.1 into a diversified digital group. We worked very hard in the past year on the implementation of our group strategy, and have taken a decisive step forward. We will also later discuss our proposed deal with Meet Group that I'm quite excited about, and that we announced this morning. Starting on Slide three, let's take a quick look at our financials before Rainer will go into more details later. In 2019, we grew revenues by + 3%. This despite a very challenging TV advertising market and indeed ahead of many German and European peers. The key factor here was that we further expanded our degree of diversification.
Digital and smart advertising business grew +38%, partially compensating for the decline in TV advertising revenues, leading our overall entertainment revenues to be -2% organically. Red Arrow Studios grew by +18%, NuCom by +16%. Importantly, now more than half of our revenues are not TV advertising, growing +12%. Indeed, they account for 52% of group revenues, that is four points ahead of previous year. Against the backdrop of a weakening TV advertising market, and the important investments we announced and made in 2019, adjusted EBITDA declined as expected, falling by -14%. On the other hand, free cash flow before M&A increased by +39% in 2019. If you go to Slide four, we've made very strong operational progress, through 2019 on our strategic priorities in becoming a diversified digital entertainment and commerce champion. One, local content.
We've never launched as many German formats as we did in 2019. 160 new German formats and programs. Best annual market share since 2015, digital viewing time across all channels and platforms growing by 30%. Two, digital attack. I really think with Joyn, we've created a unique streaming platform in Europe, because we combine more than 60 live TV channels with a video-on-demand library with more than 39,000 video assets. I think we're setting the standard here. Three, smart reach. Digital advertising and smart advertising is growing very dynamically, at +38%. With d-force, we have created an AdTech champion together with RTL that allows one booking platform for intelligent TV and online video advertising. This cooperation is unique in Europe, and indeed, I think a space where there's more to come. Four, Red Arrow Studios.
A very good year for Red Arrow Studios, especially for our German business as our focus is on increasing the proportion of in-house productions. 2019, 18% of our local program came from our own Redseven. That's four points ahead of previous year. You will have seen our announcement that we've set up a second production company in Germany, called Pyjama Pictures. Again, I think a space where we look for more to come. NuCom, number five, is our most powerful lever for diversification and continues to grow at double-digit rates. It's uniquely benefiting from the entertainment power of bringing alive our programming with 60 million Germans every month. Six, transformation. We've made good structural progress on organization from setting up an end-to-end entertainment company, a cleaner holding setup. We've taken out management layers, refreshed the team, and really worked on our corporate culture.
In short, we've become faster, more flexible, and more efficient. If you go to Slide five, I just wanted to go a little bit deeper on two, three of these points. On Slide five, if you look at local content, it's really at the heart of our strategy because I think if we want to be successful as a broadcaster and platform-agnostic German entertainment footprint, then we need to own the content we create. In 2019, we've invested more than EUR 1 billion in our programming, with much greater emphasis on in-house production. ProSieben alone had 33% more local content in prime time, it's working. One example that I quite like is Late Night Berlin, because it shows that our formats are no longer just about linear and digital.
In Late Night Berlin, where Klaas, I think, is quite quickly becoming the German James Corden, we now have a larger audience online than linear. It's really the first time for us with a key brand or format where we are achieving a higher total video view time on all online platforms than on linear TV. Yet at the same point in time, our linear TV audience is also growing. We want more of this. If you go to Slide six, I wanted to move to Joyn, our streaming platform that we're running jointly with Discovery. We have a clear standalone position in the German market. We combine live TV with video-on-demand content, all in just one app. Users, I think, find our combination just right. If you look at the share of live TV to video-on-demand, it's almost balanced at 47/53.
We've launched our free version on the 18th of June last year, our subscription version, Joyn PLUS+, at the 28th of November. In Joyn PLUS+, we're offering a much bigger lineup of originals and a very deep library. We're still in the starting phase, but I think our initial figures are quite encouraging. The app was downloaded more than 6.5 million times in 2019. Unique users in December were 3.5 million, up 30% on November, and our monthly active users were over 7 million at the end of the year. Recall that when we embarked on this journey, I set out an ambition for us to reach 10 million users within the first two years of being live. Indeed, I am quite confident that we have a good shot at achieving that number already in 2020.
On Slide seven, ultimately, what really matters is that we market our reach, whether it's digital or linear, more profitably. Smart advertising products in this play a decisive role because they enable us to make tailored offers to advertising customers in addition to the mass broad reach appeal we have. In 2019, we've really initiated a great deal here that will help us in 2020 and the coming years. More than 12 million households in Germany can be targeted via addressable TV campaigns, thereof, 5 million via addressable TV spots. You can see the huge potential that we can tap into with our addressable TV spot product that we launched in August. This means that TV advertising can be played out exclusively to an individually defined target audience, and the playout criteria can be gender, age, geography, interest, net income, and so forth.
In 2019, we've played out over 800 addressable TV campaigns, and in June, we entered into a joint venture, d-force, with RTL, which I think is really a unique cooperation in the advertising market that does not exist anywhere else in Europe. We now offer a fully automated platform that allows companies to book advertising, both addressable TV and online video, through one single interface. Maybe also a good moment to emphasize how important both national and European partnerships are in the media and tech sector. After all, we have massive potential for innovation in this area to hold our own against competition coming from across the pond. On to Slide eight and distribution.
Just wanted to make a point here that distribution is an area that's becoming increasingly important and opens up new revenue models for us, where we benefit from the technical activation fees that end customers pay the respective providers for programs and high definition quality. Our HD user base grew by 6%, and the number of users of our ProSiebenSat.1 HD stations in Germany is now 10 million+. We have concluded new distribution agreements, of course, Joyn is included in this, in total, the revenues in our distribution business are now EUR 155 million, are growing at 10% over 2018. On to Red Arrow Studios on Slide nine. Red Arrow Studios has really had a superb year with many records and awards for our production and distribution business, importantly, also expanding our local German footprint.
Redseven Entertainment, our German-speaking production business, looks back on the strongest year in its history in terms of revenue and profit, with a strong increase in orders from the mother house. Redseven produced 46% more video content, to just take one number. Also the setup of our next German production company, Pyjama Pictures, with Christian Ulmen and Carsten Kelber, is a milestone in how we're building a much bigger and wider creative footprint in Germany. Red Arrow Studios increased its sales internationally and to all major networks, growing revenues + 80%, producing 24% more hours of video, which includes a few really great formats, if you haven't seen them. One of my personal favorites is Vienna Blood which, by the way, increased the average market share on BBC Two by over 50%.
Studio71 stands more than anything else for the expansion of our digital reach from YouTube to Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. 12 of the 30 top German YouTube channels are ours, Studio71 has gained 19% subscribers on those channels in 2019. If you're not bored with numbers, on Snapchat, we have increased snaps globally by 3.3 billion. NuCom, Slide 10. NuCom, I think plays a very unique role where we uniquely have the ability to use our entertainment muscle to scale mostly digital commerce assets. I think we've been doing this incredibly well. Indeed, the examples of Flaconi and eHarmony show how we're approaching this. We've made a choice to invest more in Flaconi, and we've been able to advance the business, growing 48% in revenues, which by the way, is a 15-fold increase over 2014 when we put our first foot into this business.
We are now in Germany, Austria, but also Poland, and we've brought in more than 1 million new customers. Parship Group is an extraordinary story, and I'm particularly proud that we've done something that I think is quite unique, where when we took over eHarmony, which in many ways in 2001 played a key role in founding the online matchmaking market in the U.S. We took the knowledge and skill set that we have in building, winning, and leading matchmaking businesses and took eHarmony, which was a bit tired, changed the tech, changed the marketing, improved the user experience, and indeed, in December, the platform generated 56% more revenue growth and in January, 55%. For more details on our financial figures, I will now hand over to Rainer.
Thanks, Max. Good morning also from my side. I would like to continue with the review of our financial performance in the financial year 2019, as well as our dividend proposal to the general shareholder meeting, last but not least, our financial targets for the financial year 2020. Please turn with me to the next page. Our financial year 2019 results have broadly been in line with our comments made at our Q3 results. Revenues grew by +3% on a reported and +2% on an organic basis. Although we have certainly not been satisfied with the revenue decline in the TV core advertising business, the growth of +12% in all other areas combined illustrates the strong progress we have made in terms of the transformation of our group.
Entertainment revenues declined by -4%, mainly as a result of a negative TV core advertising performance and several deconsolidation effects. On an organic basis, i.e., adjusted for the deconsolidation of maxdome and 7NXT, as well as currency effects, revenues declined by -2%. It is worth highlighting that we could limit the decline of total entertainment advertising revenues to -2% in a demanding economic and ad market environment due to dynamically growing digital and smart advertising revenues. Digital and smart advertising revenues grew strongly by +38%. Revenues of our Red Arrow Studios increased by +18% on a reported and +13% on an organic basis. This growth is a result of strong growth of both the content production and distribution business as well as our Studio71. Last, but certainly not least, NuCom Group revenues improved by +16%, driven by all verticals.
Besides solid organic revenue growth of +8%, especially the first-time consolidation of eHarmony Group and Aroundhome had a positive impact. The organic performance was supported by substantial growth of Flaconi and WindStar, while Verivox continued to be negatively impacted by a challenging market environment following the insolvency of the German energy provider. Please turn with me to Page number 13. Adjusted EBITDA on the Group declined by -14%, which on the one hand reflects the already announced incremental investment in our entertainment and commerce segment in the low three-digit million EUR range, and on the other hand, a more pronounced decline of TV core advertising revenues than previously anticipated. Since the possible worst-case scenario of approximately EUR 850 million, which we have referred to in the context of our Q3 2019 results, has not materialized, Group adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 872 million.
I would like to highlight that we have made a conscious decision to continue to invest in our entertainment activities as planned, despite a more demanding macro and advertising market environment, in order to continue to make strong progress in terms of the transformation of the entertainment division into a platform-independent, sustainably profitable business. Red Arrow Studios, including Studio71, benefited from a very solid operating leverage, where the increase of EUR 100 million in terms of external revenues and EUR 23 million of internal revenues led to a segment-adjusted EBITDA increase of EUR 70 million or + 57% to EUR 48 million. The NuCom Group delivered earnings in line with the outlook provided in our Q3 results presentation and achieved an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 98 million.
The slight decline by -4% reflects bothDrawing profits such as of the matchmaking business, but also incremental investments such as in Flaconi as well as lower profits of Verivox. Let me continue on Page 14 with a comment on EBIT, net income and free cash flow. Thanks to notably lower one-off effects, which in the prior year were predominantly related to a change in our program strategy and resulting impairment and provisions. EBIT and reported net income both improved notably by +66%. The financial result came in at -EUR 6 million. This has been the result of two opposing effects. On the one hand, financial result was predominantly determined by a negative interest result of -EUR 56 million, as well as a negative at equity result of -EUR 50 million, mainly due to the group's share of the net loss of our streaming platform, Joyn.
On the other hand, valuation effects in the amount of approximately EUR 100 million led to a meaningful counterbalancing effect. Adjusted for one-off effects, financial result came in at about EUR 130 million. Adjusted net income, as expected, mirrors the development of adjusted EBITDA, as well as the before-mentioned weaker underlying financial result. Let me also again remind you that the financial year 2019 was marked by several significant investments in the future of the group. Despite all this, free cash flow before M&A improved by +39% to EUR 339 million. Please turn with me to Page number 15. On this page, we would like to make a couple of additional comments about program CapEx and program spend, since the information provided in the annual report as well as the cash flow statement are not necessarily self-explanatory. Let me start with the current program assets.
The chart on the left-hand side shows how the program assets have developed, i.e. how many program rights have been added to the balance sheet and how much has been used. As can be seen, we have acquired program rights in the amount of EUR 1,170,000,000, which not only includes formats from already provisioned U.S. licensed content, but also an incremental upfront investment of more than EUR 70 million in local commissioned content. On the other hand, program rights in the amount of EUR 1,060,000,000 have either been aired and amortized or an already recognized provision has been used. As a result of the usage of the provisions, the consumption shown in the cash flow statement of EUR 958 million is lower than the balance sheet.
Our program assets have therefore increased by EUR 91 million, which to a large extent is additional content we will use in the foreseeable future.
Last but not least, we want to shed a bit more light on the total program costs of the group. The main difference between total group program costs and program consumption is content which is directly expensed, i.e. which we do not capitalize on the balance sheet. Total program costs of the group have increased to EUR 1.03 billion, up from EUR 981 million, excluding maxdome and 7NXT last year. For the year 2020, we are planning a further increase of up to EUR 50 million, which may lead to a total program cost of up to EUR 1.08 billion. This EUR 50 million is a number which is not 100% clear, and where we will decide in 2020 if it is worth to spend it. Let us now have a look at the group's net debt position on Page 16.
At the year-end 2019, the group's net debt position was EUR 2,245 million, which means an increase of EUR 82 million compared to year-end 2018, and a reduction by EUR 343 million in the fourth quarter due to a strong cash generation. The increase of the net debt position was primarily the result of EUR 130 million M&A related cash expense. The dividend of EUR 269 million and also other negative cash effects, such as from the investment in Joyn, have been fully covered by the generated operating free cash flow. Financial leverage increased to 2.6 x, mainly as a result of a lower adjusted EBITDA. As you know, we have made the decision to invest in several areas in entertainment and NuCom, which, besides lower profits resulting from our advertising activities, led to an expected increase of the financial leverage.
Please note that we remain fully committed to our midterm general financial leverage target range of 1.5x-2.5 x, which we expect to reach again through excess cash generation, adjusted EBITDA growth, but also excess portfolio management. Please turn to Page 17 where we show our dividend proposal for the financial year 2019. Since financial year 2018, ProSiebenSat.1 has pursued a dividend policy of distributing around 50% of the adjusted net income to the shareholders as a dividend. Cash inflows exceeding the dividend distribution will primarily be used for investments on organic and inorganic growth. In line with before-mentioned distribution policy, the executive committee is advising the supervisory board to propose a dividend of around 50% of adjusted net income of EUR 0.85 per share to the annual general shareholder. This compares to EUR 1.19 per share last year and currently represents an attractive dividend yield of about 8%.
Let me finish my part of the presentation with the presentation of our financial outlook for the year 2020, as well as the comments on two major milestones in terms of the group's transformation on Page 18 and 19. In 2020, we are targeting group revenues of approximately EUR 4.3 billion in our base case scenario, which comprises flat entertainment segment revenues as well as low double-digit growth of Red Arrow Studios and the NuCom Group. It is also based on the assumption of slightly declining entertainment advertising revenues, resulting from a more pronounced decline of TV core advertising revenues and a further dynamic increase in digital and smart advertising revenues amongst others. Despite incremental program investments of up to EUR 50 million, we are targeting an about stable adjusted EBITDA of approximately EUR 870 million in this scenario.
Please note also that this assumption takes constant exchange rates and an unchanged portfolio, e.g., the Meet Group acquisition into account. As can be seen on the slide, we also provide ranges for both group revenues and adjusted EBITDA besides our base case scenario. This should reflect the potential weaker or better financial performance of the group. This predominantly relates to a better or worse development of entertainment advertising revenues in the range of assumed -3% to +2%, whereas our base case scenario assumption of slightly declining entertainment advertising revenues, the different mix in terms of group revenues and hence cost development. As a result, group revenues may vary in the range of EUR 4.2 billion-EUR 4.4 billion, whereas adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of EUR 800 million-EUR 900 million.
Adjusted net income is expected to reflect the adjusted EBITDA development, but also further increase of depreciation and a somewhat weaker at equity result due to slightly higher investments in . It may therefore decline in the double-digit EUR million range. We also expect the free cash flow to decline by at least a double-digit EUR million amount due to an increase of CapEx related to our campus in Unterföhring and higher again normalized tax payments. Last but not least, we expect the group's financial leverage to be slightly above the upper end of our target range of 1.5x-2.5x in 2020. We remain fully committed to reach this target range again as soon as possible. Let me also highlight that those assumptions do not take into account the potential more meaningful negative impact on the German macroeconomic and advertising environment resulting from the spreading coronavirus.
While we are currently not aware of any such adverse effects on our business yet and advertising customers are signaling a normal and solid spending behavior, it cannot be excluded that even the first quarter might be burdened by short-term cancellations of bookings or some disruption in the commerce and content production business in March. As already said, all effects out of The Meet Group acquisition are also not included in our 2020 guidance because we have to wait up to the shareholders of The Meet Group to approve the deal. Please turn with me to Page 19. Before I hand back to Max, I would like to highlight two major milestones in terms of the group structure, which make me confident that we continue to make good progress to make the company future fit, successful, and highly profitable.
As you might have seen most recently, we have announced that all of our entertainment activities, i.e., the TV operations, our digital units, the distribution business, as well as our sales house, Seven.One Media, will soon be merged under one roof and become a fully operational managed separate entity called Seven.One Entertainment. This move will ensure that we can maximize results in terms of viewing across all platforms from our significant program investment. It also means a lean and efficient operation with people that have common goals and financial targets. Along with this decision, we have set up a separate holding function that marks the second major step forward for the group. The holding functions will continue to be in charge of the group's strategy, its execution, as well as capital allocation, and will serve as service provider for the different operating units.
We will show, beginning with Q1, these costs outside of the entertainment segment in our reconciliation line. The Media SE also includes a shared service center with functions like accounting and HR payroll, and several centers of excellence with important support functions such as recruitment, regulatory affairs, and legal. These costs will be further charged to the sector. With the new setup, we are confident to further increase the group's agility in a constantly changing market, a better cost control as in the past, and therefore will start to further realize the maximum value creation potential of ProSiebenSat.1.
Thank you, Rainer. As you've seen, we operate in not the easiest of environments, but clearly we're doing everything from structure to focusing on the right priorities to make ProSieben future fit and prosper. In all this, even more important that we diversify to be more digital. For 2020, we want to continue revenue growth and stabilize adjusted EBITDA. Let me just briefly comment on Q1 and start of the year. Overall, Q1 start and outlook for the year has been confident. We've seen very good accelerated growth in digital and reach, and in NuCom, and encouragingly, Verivox, where we had a distortion in the energy market last year, I think is coming back well. TV market continues to be difficult. More encouraging, our commitment levels for the year look pretty good and confident. Of course, any possible coronavirus impact is not included.
This brings me to this morning's news. This morning, we announced that we teamed up with General Atlantic to, last night, sign an agreement for the acquisition of the online dating and social entertainment company, The Meet Group. It is an agreement that is also strongly supported by The Meet Group management. We're offering a cash price of $630 per share to Meet Group shareholders, valuing the group at approximately $500 million enterprise value, and think this is a very attractive offer. Important to remember that Meet Group is listed on NASDAQ, and this means all this is subject to the satisfaction of customary conditions, including approval of Meet shareholders and receipt of required antitrust and regulatory approvals. We expect for this acquisition to close in the second half of 2020.
We believe this is a unique opportunity to combine The Meet Group with our successful Parship Group and its brands, Parship, ElitePartner, and eHarmony. The ambition here is to build a half a billion-plus revenue, top three global matchmaking group. The Meet Group generated approximately $206.5 million of revenue and approximately $39.5 million of adjusted EBITDA for the 12 months period ending September 30, 2019. The Meet Group includes a portfolio of fast-growing dating and live video apps and U.S. brands such as MeetMe and Tagged, as well as the German brand, Woohoo. This makes The Meet Group the perfect complement to our Parship Group, both in terms of portfolio and geography. We are therefore very convinced that we can create significant additional value with this transaction.
Now, if you go to Slide 22, I thought it's good to just remind us of the pathway that we've been on and why we have so much conviction in this transaction. Our conviction is based on a track record with Parship Group as a great example of how ProSiebenSat.1 can uniquely build companies and create value. We came into Parship via Media for Equity. Our entertainment muscle helped build the business. We turned eHarmony in 18 months from an outdated loss-making business to one of very profitable and fast growth, and we have a great team. The envisioned shareholding structure makes a pre-merger enterprise value for Parship Group of EUR 725 million, which would be up EUR 300 million for when we brought GA in, though, of course, we've subsequently acquired eHarmony.
Really, the combination of Parship Group and Meet Group is the next logical step in this development journey. On to 2020, Slide 23. 2020, we are staying the course and accelerating. One, local content. We're focused more than ever on live local content on all channels. We again are investing more than EUR 1 billion in our program, more than half of which is local content. In Q1 alone, viewers can look forward to more than 40 new local formats. We're just getting going this year. Next week, the second season of The Masked Singer will start. We're also exporting The Masked Singer to Austria for the first time, and currently, we are in the 15th season of Germany's Next Topmodel, going as strong as ever with a market share just last week of 19.1%, and indeed, amongst young women between 14 and 29, 46.6%.
We have a great lineup of other programs coming in 2020. On digital attack, our goal really is to develop Joyn into a leading national streaming platform. To do this, we're expanding Joyn on three levels: in terms of content, technology, and geography. We have 12 new originals for 2020 in the pipeline, stories that can only be seen on Joyn. For example, Joyn just presented at the Berlinale, a six-part comedy drama called From the Diary of an Uber Driver, featuring Kostja Ullmann, that I'm really excited about. I think we're building up a particular expertise all the way going back to "jerks." in having unique German humorous drama that people love and is quite exciting.
We are integrating new technical features such as download functions, step-by-step integrating our maxdome library, and in 2020, together with Discovery and Eurosport Player, we will make Joyn the most comprehensive home of the Olympics in Germany, and indeed, we continue to have very active discussions to bring the Joyn platform to other European countries. Three, Smart Reach. We continue to scale our intelligent advertising products and want to double our addressable TV revenues. With these campaigns, we offer targeted advertising on TV and combine reach with addressability. We expect further growth from d-force, our RTL joint venture, in 2020, not least thanks to the international rollout of our booking platform. Since February, we are already active in the Austrian market. If you go to Slide 24 on Red Arrow Studios, we will continue to focus on expanding our German content footprint and ecosystem.
Redseven, Pyjama Pictures, more in the pipeline, and our international business is very strong. Love Is Blind on Netflix has been a huge smash hit, and just one example, and of course, on Studio71, we will continue to build more digital reach from YouTube to TikTok. NuCom, we expect for 2020, double-digit growth in revenues and adjusted EBITDA, and we're concentrating on the expansion of our four key verticals. I have commented on Parship earlier. If you look at Flaconi, which is delivering superb growth, and we really have an aspiration to become the number one beauty destination in Germany and beyond. On Verivox, we see a stabilizing energy market, and we have good plans in the pipe to expand our offering across insurance, telco, and banking.
In Die Job- und Reise-Meile, so on experiences, is quite an exciting journey where we are expanding this experience business from vouchers to direct bookings and a much broader offering. Transformation, while it's a journey never done, Rainer commented on building Seven.One Entertainment Group, which we're quite excited about because we are combining for the first time our channel brands with the content digital and marketing business under one roof. We're continuing to make ProSieben future fit, and we have a great team full of passion to win and all bought in to be part of this journey. Slide 25, and to close. Three things to take away. One, 2019 was a year with strong progress on our strategic agenda and fundamental investments in our future to transform ProSiebenSat.1 into a diversified digital group. More than 50% of our revenues are generated outside TV advertising.
We are growing ahead of many of our peers and are becoming one of the more diversified media companies in Europe. Two, 2020, we will stay the course, become even more local, more digital, smarter in our advertising product, and have an ambition to further grow and diversify revenues and stabilize adjusted EBITDA. Three, we want to do all this to create sustainable value for our shareholders. This is exactly what a team of more than 7,000 people are working on with all their hearts and minds. Thank you very much for your attention.