It was announced this week that Nordic Entertainment Group (NENT) will look to find a buyer for its NENT Studios UK holding, as they realign their focus on the international expansion of their Viaplay SVOD service
More D2C services are vertically integrating production and distribution businesses into the chain to ensure content availability, so this is perhaps a surprising move given the plans to increase Viaplay’s global footprint
There are suggestions that the two will continue to work closely with content being supplied in future
Viaplay is a pan regional service available in each of the Nordic countries
In Sweden it is the second biggest buyer of US scripted series behind WarnerMedia (for HBO Nordic)
Since the beginning of the 2016/17 season NENT has acquired shows for its Free (TV6) and Pay (TV3, TV8) TV channels but is now largely premiering international acquisitions online
33 new US shows have premiered since 2016 on the service
Through NENT’s partnership with Sony, the latter is the biggest supplier of new seasons to the service (14), with NBCUniversal a distant second (6 shows)
Recent premieres include titles from ViacomCBS (68 Whiskey), Disney (Good Trouble) and MGM (Perpetual Grace, LTD)
Though the sale of NENT Studios UK may not completely sever the pipeline and content may still appear on the Viaplay service from this source, there is a huge amount of scripted content that remains unaired in the market
In Sweden there are 139 unaired shows from the last four US seasons, with 54 series available from the 2019/20 slate alone.
Notable titles available still in Sweden that have amassed wide distribution elsewhere include The Feed (All3Media), Evil (ViacomCBS) and High Fidelity (Disney)
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