Paramount Global continue to face challenges as they look for growth in their direct-to-consumer segment, including SVOD initiatives Paramount+ and Sky Showtime and their AVOD business Pluto TV.
US Studios are facing significant scrutiny when it comes to P&L and costs, with Paramount’s D2C streaming unit continuing to post losses. The territorial rollout of Pluto is in the context of a challenging business environment where the markets with better AVOD prospects have already launched.
In May last year (2022), Pluto expanded to the Nordics, launching in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The launch in the Nordics was through a partnership with the Viaplay Group, their first partnership with a company operating as a local AVOD service (Viafree). In addition to their SVOD service Viaplay, the Viaplay Group have Free-TV channels in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (TV3, 6, 8 and 10) that offer reality shows, international drama, sitcoms, animation and sports. Viafree was the collective AVOD service for their Free TV channels, offering relatively basic catch-up services for the channels. When Pluto launched, they replaced Viafree, using the Viafree brand only for Pluto TV's on-demand content, billed as ”On Demand powered by Viafree”.
The service continued to offer Viafree content, but was rebranded as Pluto and added FAST channels to create a broader programming line-up with locally curated FAST channels live in each country. Critically, it also sees Viafree’s Ad Sales machine taking responsibility for what otherwise would have been a significant challenge for Paramount - with Viafree’s current market position being a key advantage for Pluto.
The new service launched with over 100 channels. Paramount provides 63% of all channels, originating from their brands and The Viaplay group currently offers 11% of channels, with the Swedish market offering 13 channels made up of local recognisable hits such as Lyxfällan (Luxury Trap), Svenska Truckers and Svenska Hollywoodfruar (Swedish Hollywood Wives).
Audiences can also stream the popular reality format Paradise Hotel, with new episodes released weekly following the show's premiere on Viaplay SVOD service.
The vast majority of channels are single IP. This includes titles from the Paramount stable such as The Hills, Catfish: The TV Show and Ex on The Beach from MTV, South Park from Comedy Central and kids and families hits such as the legendary SpongeBob SquarePants.
Channels from Viafree are almost all Single IP, with the only exception the Single Genre channel Viafree Movies.
Only 23% of the FAST channels in Sweden are scripted content, perhaps reflecting the greater challenge surfacing these channels and the abundance and ease of launching Single IP unscripted FAST channels from companies with extensive catalogues of owned content.
We understand that in the early days, the overall service performance was underwhelming, but as the service repositioned more local reality formats, exclusivity and fresher windowing helped improve uptake and viewing.
Viaplay Group channels are also almost entirely unscripted, with the lone Movie channel the only scripted initiative to date.
Pluto Nordics has an extensive offer of the channels we have come to expect from Pluto, boasting a variety of shows from their channel brands, genre channels such as Pluto Movies and branded channels from MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. They also include 3rd party channels such as Fail Army, Just for Laughs, Motorvision, Nature Time among others and then the local initiatives of their partner Viaplay.
Pluto TV is increasing its global coverage gradually. They are available now in the US, Canada, Latin America, Australia, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Partnerships will no doubt continue to be key as they extend their presence across the globe, whether they deliver technical distribution, Ad Sales, local content, local promotion or any combination of those elements.
Partnerships like their Viaplay Group venture may provide to be more critical for them if they are to expand their reach further than their current foothold, with launching alone in many new markets becoming a challenging option due to increased scrutiny of D2C investments.
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