Nordic Telecom operator Telia acquired Bonnier Broadcasting back in 2018. This included the Pay TV and SVOD business of C More in addition to the Swedish commercial broadcaster TV4. Like many Telcos, Telia has struggled with their content assets and the challenging market has lead to Telia confirming the close of the C More Pay TV business in April.
The integration of C More into TV4 Play presents a strong opportunity in Sweden for the TV4 business to present a hybrid AVOD and SVOD proposition, realign C More channels as TV4 branded channels and unify all services under one coherent brand.
Telia launched its new streaming service TV4 Play in August, replacing the C More brand. TV4’s free AVOD tier offers basic catch-up from the TV4 channels and news. C More content is now available as part of the TV4 Play+ 59 Kr tier that comes with advertising, with this tier also including previews and premieres of TV4 linear channel content. Users can then upgrade to the 149 Kr tier and remove adverts and add the BritBox (more British content from BBC, ITV and All3Media) and Hayu (more reality shows from NBCUniversal) bundle to their offer.
3Vision’s Show Tracker reveals the volume and diversity of TV series acquisitions by the Telia-owned services in the past five years. Paramount, Lionsgate and NBCUniversal are the top content providers to Telia’s service, while UK content mostly comes from BBC Studios and All3Media with three new series from the latter premiering on free AVOD this year.
Before the merger of C More and TV4 Play, almost 40% of US, UK and US/UK series released by Telia were through its Pay TV service C More. However, in 2022, the company is shown to have leaned more into premiering shows on TV4 Play, while releases on Pay TV and SVOD services have decreased from the year before.
Utilisation of TV shows by Telia remain primarily unchanged so far with one notable difference seen in A Million Little Things. On the new service, the first season of the show which first premiered on Pay TV C More is now available on the free AVOD tier, while the rest of the seasons are available through SVOD.
Telia’s new TV4 Play service enables the company to leverage its free TV presence alongside AVOD and SVOD services. We would expect to see even more evolution in terms of how they release content across their different services.
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