Newsletter 3rd of December: Do the Streaming Consumers Really Get What They Want?

NEWSLETTER

3 December 2020

Mediavision’s analysis of the interplay between content supply and demand shows a gap. Today’s consumers of video streaming services don’t really find what they want – or maybe the supply is not targeted enough. The conclusion? There is room for improvement.

The Nordic streaming market has seen a substantial growth over the last 12 months, with additionally 3 million new subscriptions (i.e. SVOD). The market is characterized by intense competition and an increasing supply of content. So, how do the streaming services meet the consumer demand in the Nordic’s?

* Library/on demand centric genres selected, i.e. news, sports, music etc excluded.
Source: Mediavision

The dominant streaming services in the Nordics are Netflix, Viaplay, HBO Nordic, Disney+ and Cmore. The aggregated content supply of these services shows a clear dominance of non-local TV series. On the other hand, we notice that although foreign TV series gather the single largest viewing share, there is an overload of this genre. And the same goes for the second largest genre – kids’ content, where supply highly exceeds demand. Looking at local entertainment the relation is the opposite: Share of supply is still small while the genre actually attracts 10% of all viewing. The conclusion? In a short-term perspective, an increasing demand will be skewed towards local content. As online viewing matures, the late majority and older households will become increasingly important for market growth. And here we see a greater demand for local content in general and entertainment in particular.

Another interesting sign of times: The Nordic streaming landscape saw yet another actor entering this last week – the British sports streaming service DAZN. It launched in 200 new countries in a version exclusively focused on boxing. In other countries (e.g. Austria, Germany and Switzerland), DAZN also holds rights to several other sports, including the FIFA World Cup, NFL and NBA.

Further, an upcoming addition to the market was announced yesterday, when Discovery revealed that new service Discovery+ will launch in 25 countries with a focus on non-scripted content. In the Nordics, this means that Dplay will be rebranded as Discovery+ in January, with additions to the current content offering, for example Eurosport’s sports rights.

Industry News

NENT Group Acquires Baltic CL Rights

In a deal reaching until the end of the 2023/2024 season, NENT Group has acquired the exclusive rights to the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League to be shown live on Viaplay in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

NRK & TV 2 NO Acquires Rights to FIFA WC

Actors NRK and TV 2 have jointly secured the Norwegian rights to the FIFA World Cup 2026, taking place in USA, Mexico, and Canada. Hence, the two actors continue its cooperation on sports rights – recently acquiring rights to UEFA European Championships 2024 and 2028.

Hopster launches on Com Hem Play+

Com Hem+ expands its content offering for children as the pre-school educational and entertainment platform Hopster is now available via the service.

Winners of Danish Podcastsprisen Revealed

Last Sunday, the Danish Center for Podcasting presented the winners of the Podcastprisen. Out of 300 podcasts, 30 were nominated and 5 received awards in this second annual instalment of the award ceremony.

SVT’s Channels Available via Dplay

Dplay’s Live+TV package, priced at 149 SEK per month, now offers SVT’s channels. TV4’s channels (apart from Cmore) are already part of the package following Discovery’s purchase of Telia’s OTT-rights in May.

Nordic Public Service in New Cooperation

The Nordic public service actors YLE, NRK, SVT and DR have joined forces in a project for children’s programs, B14. The countries participating in B14 offer each other their own series and co-productions – 14 series annually.

Discovery Sells Olympic Rights to DR and TV 2

DR and TV2 will be providing the linear TV broadcasts of the Olympic Games in Beijing 2022 and Paris 2024 to the Danish people following an agreement with Discovery, which will concentrate their coverage to Dplay.

SVT Prolongs Deal for Rally WCR

On Sunday, this year’s Rally WCR tournament will be completed. SVT, the current right holder, announced Wednesday that it will continue to broadcast the races for the coming two seasons, until the end of 2022.

Australia Mandates Local Content Quota

According to reports, the Australian government is considering introducing rules impeding international streaming services to carry a minimum amount of local programming. The move would be part of a broader measure to aid the highly Covid-19 impacted local TV industry.

Podimo Enters Agreement with iHeartMedia

Danish podcast service Podimo has entered an partnership with US producer iHeartMedia. The collaboration entails that podcasts produced by iHeartMedia will be translated from English to Spanish, German and Danish and placed in Podimo’s content catalogue.

Industry Events

CTAM Europe Executive Management Programme: 6-11 June 2021, Fontainebleau, France
MWC Shanghai: 23-25 February 2021, Shanghai, China
MWC Barcelona: 28 June – 1 July 2021, Barcelona, Spain

*Mediavision will attend
**Mediavision will present