In the past year, the Scandinavian streamer Viaplay has seen tremendous growth in both subscriber numbers and value as they’ve expanded from being a local European SVOD service providing niche content to a brand with global recognition. This growth can be attributed to their movement away from D2C in markets where they had less brand recognition and careful expansion into markets with demand for Nordic content, after establishing themselves as the place to go for ‘Nordic Noir’.
Viaplay Select has become their biggest weapon in achieving this, allowing them to expand into markets such as Japan where they’ve teamed up with partner platforms or services to establish a Viaplay section of premium original content that can be viewed by the subscribers of that platform at no additional cost. This has allowed them to expand their brand of content into 18 different markets across the world with Canal+ in Austria becoming their most recent partner. Viaplay Select was also launched at the beginning of the year in Canada where they managed to partner with Bell Media’s Crave. With Canada being one of their targets for D2C launch in Q1 2023 this move was to essentially give the audience a teaser of their huge slate of original Nordic content which they consider to be their biggest strength going into the North American markets. Some popular global players like Warner Brothers Discovery. have also taken notice of this strategy and its success , coming up with their own variations. For example, the WarnerPass which launched in France last month is available as a prime video channel with a separate subscription fee.
From Viaplay’s recentAnnual Sustainability report, it is obvious that they aim to take the Netflix route of focusing on originals, having premiered 126 originals in 2022 alone, which is more than the previous three years combined.
However, Viaplay’s focus on producing more original content is also a consequence of being unable to find the right 3rd party content to buy in all the markets they expand to. When Viaplay expanded to Poland in August 2021 it was their first D2C expansion to a country outside the Nordic and Baltic states. They became more opportunistic in their content acquisitions as they struggled to obtain the same variety of 3rd party English language content found in Viaplay Sweden for example. Around 50% of the content in Viaplay Poland was different to their other markets at the time, and in 2022 when they expanded to the Netherlands they ended up taking a similar approach. Looking at the variety of 3rd party English language content on Viaplay Sweden compared to Poland and the Netherlands it is apparent that they’ve struggled to obtain any comedy shows in both those markets and have focussed more on obtaining serial and procedural dramas instead.
This opportunistic buying strategy seems to be the new approach that Viaplay wants to take with their 3rd party English language acquisitions as they show no signs of slowing down. In fact, Viaplay has increased their buying of this type of content, contrary to Netflix who slowed down their acquisitions once they started to ramp up the production of their originals. Looking at their acquisitions from Sweden, the Netherlands and Poland we can see that they have been buying more third-party content each year to add to the value of their service in these markets.
With their recent launches in the UK, US and Canada in the last few months this strategy should prove to be useful as the general customer base in these countries would expect some English language content to be present. This could come in the form of opportunistic acquisitions or ramping up the production of more English language originals, Viaplay currently has a few original and co-produced English language shows such as “Billy the Kid” and “Max Anger" but most of these shows have already had a first window premiere in all 3 countries. But Viaplay has announced that 6 new original English shows are in production which should make things more attractive for potential customers.
At the end of 2022, Viaplay had over 7.3 million subscribers, almost double (4 Million) the amount they had at the start of the year. Their expansion to the US and Canada comes at a time when other streaming services are raising their subscription prices, and with Viaplay entering both markets at a lower price point it just might be enough to attract potential customers who are looking to get out of their pricey subscriptions for some niche Nordic content. With planned D2C expansions to 4 other countries by the end of 2023 and the continuous spread of Viaplay Select to more partner platforms in different markets around the world, things don’t seem to be slowing down for Viaplay at the moment.
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