As of Q1 2022, 60 percent of the Swedish households subscribed to at least one paid video streaming service. Following several years of strong growth, Mediavision can now conclude that the number of subscribing households has remained essentially unchanged over the past 12 months. Growth in “stacking” is also diminishing, i.e., number of subscriptions per paying household. Hence, there are several factors that indicate that the Swedish SVOD market has reached maturity. Simultaneously, advertising supported streaming services are now being launched on a broad scale. Mediavision believes that consumer’s appetite for free services is likely to increase henceforth.          

Mediavision’s analysis of the first quarter of 2022 shows that paid video streaming services, SVOD, have now reached maturity, following a decade of consistent growth. Growth in Q1 2022 was modest at approximately 4 percent (non-significant), both when comparing year over year and quarter over quarter. Today, an SVOD household pays approximately SEK 220 per month, which also represents a modest, non-significant growth comparing year over year. Hence, the recent launches of several new services have not had any impact neither on the SVOD penetration in Sweden, nor average spend per household. Nevertheless, these launches have incited competition for the addressable market. Further, when looking at viewing time or number of viewers, neither show any growth compared year over year.

Given current supply and pricing, Mediavision’s conclusion is that those who wish to subscribe to an SVOD service already do so by now. Hence, we expect competition over existing customers to increase. We are also likely to see increased growth for services that are partly or fully financed by advertising.

– For some time now, we have seen the Swedish market for SVOD services approaching maturity and during Q1 2022, the signs have become increasingly obvious, comments Marie Nilsson, CEO of Mediavision. Several actors are now speaking about shifting strategies, and ad-funded services are expected to boost in the coming years. Especially two cases come to mind; Disney’s plan to add an advertising financed tier to Disney Plus and Netflix’s shift in attitude towards advertising following its latest quarterly report. In addition, the launch of services like Pluto TV is likely to spur this development.