Advanced Television

International giants dominating Nordic OTT market

June 2, 2015

Mediavision has for the 5th year conducted an in-depth analysis of the Nordic OTT market and the conclusion is that the market is in a quick transformation. On an average day, about one third of the Nordic population is watching streaming video, indicating a yearly growth rate of over 30 per cent. Most of the viewers rely on content from international giants such as YouTube, Facebook and Netflix. Looking at the revenues, SVoD is generating a much greater total market value than AVoD and TVoD.

Nordic media companies were early to jump on the OTT bandwagon, leading the way to new ways of TV consumption. However, recent years, they as a group have seen their position weakened in all Nordic countries. While YouTube has been significantly strengthened and today counts as the leading OTT service in terms of reach, SVoD provider Netflix is a strong runner up. Netflix is number one as SVoD provider in every Nordic country and it benefits greatly from an early entrance on the market.

Further, added together, the two US giants YouTube and Netflix account for the largest overall share of OTT viewing in the region. Aside from these two, local public service broadcasters hold a strong position in the Nordics and are among the top 3 OTT players in all countries.

“The new and emerging digital TV market puts quite some pressure on the incumbents. Global US media companies are very strong, both in SVoD and advertising. The consumer demand for local content is evident, but each Nordic country is quite limited in size. This makes content relatively more expensive, with local actors producing for much smaller audiences. It is another business case for national content actors compared to the global players who profit from an economy of scale business,” says Marie Nilsson, CEO of Mediavision. “Right now we see many different types of strategies, where local actors test various ways towards a sustainable OTT business. What we have already seen for sure, is that the consumer is the ultimate judge.”

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