Newsletter 9th of December: Denmark – The Front Runner in the Nordic Video Transformation
NEWSLETTER
9 December 2020
Over the last decade, Nordic TV viewers have increasingly moved away from traditional TV. Briefly summarising these last ten years, Denmark seems to have come the furthest in this digital transformation.
Declining traditional TV viewing is a persistent and long-term trend in the Nordics. Although the pandemic has somewhat slowed down the pace, there is no doubt that the decline continues. In Denmark, Q3 2020 does not deviate from the trend. Denmark is the only Nordic country where traditional viewing continuous to decrease across the board (i.e. age groups). The year-on-year decline in daily viewing minutes amounts to -7%. For the other Nordic countries, the YOY change range between -2% and +3%.
Another sign of the strong Danish transformation is that a relatively larger share of households now has replaced traditional pay TV with SVOD. The other Nordic countries are a little behind. One contributing factor to this may be the earlier dispute between pay TV operator Yousee and Discovery, which negatively affected the penetration of traditional pay TV. This seems to have spurred the appetite for streaming and pushed transformation forward.
In Mediavisions Fall 2020 analysis, we conclude that 20% of the Danish households today are SVOD-only; i.e. only subscribing to SVOD without paying for any traditional pay channel. The average for the other Nordic countries is significantly lower. Likely, this is also accelerated by numerous operator initiatives – so called buy-through SVOD (BSVOD). The largest telco TDC – with brands such as Yousee and Telmore – was actually one of the first Nordic operator to offer Netflix as part of its bundling. And speaking of Netflix, Denmark is also the Nordic country where Netflix grew most in terms of new subscribers YOY (Q3 20 vs Q3 19), +20%, and thereby pulling ahead of Norway. Last but not least, Danish churn intentions are lower in multi-SVOD households compared to the other Nordic countries. Why? Mediavision analysis points at a strong presence of operator packages, building a relatively higher stacking factor (i.e. households with +1 subscription).
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