A notable change this football season is the entrance of Amazon Prime Video on the Nordic sports market, as the streamer has acquired ten percent of the Premier Legue games in Denmark and Sweden. Prime Video premiered its football coverage on Saturday with the opening match between Ipswich and Liverpool. Viaplay Group’s team of hosts, experts and commentators covered the game, but in a Prime Video branded VR studio.

Prime Video has highlighted its new functionality of the broadcast, such as the function “rapid recap”, where viewers who join late, can see short recap clips of the highlights up to that point. The technology is based on AI and clips are picked out based on actions such as yellow/red cards, goals, penalties etc.

The Italian top league Serie A covered the headlines last week, mainly due to its uncertain future in the Nordics. In Sweden, TV4 retained the rights on Friday, the day before launch. Meanwhile in Denmark and Finland, no buyers of the right have been announced yet, though the new season has already kicked-off. In Norway, Schibsted holds the rights to the Serie A.

The Italian Serie A football league remains one of the most popular international sports leagues among Nordic consumers, with more than one million 15-74-year-olds expressing interest in viewing the league. Interest is especially high in Sweden, where Serie A is on par with some of the most popular sports such as Formula 1. This is concluded in Mediavision’s sports analysis 2024.

The analysis provides an updated overview of the market and an in-depth analysis of the most important KPIs for sports via video in the Nordics. This year’s analysis covers four countries, 19 sports, and over 100 rights (leagues and tournaments). If you have any questions regarding the Sports Analysis, don’t hesitate to contact Mediavision’s senior analyst Adrian Grande at Adrian.grande@mediavision.se.

Several Danish content production companies, including Zentropa and Crone Film, have called for a boycott of YouSee, one of Denmark’s largest TV distributors. The producers claim that YouSee has been distributing their TV shows and films without permission or payment since April 2023, after failing to reach a new agreement. The suggested boycott is supported by several industry groups such as the Danish Actors’ Association and the Danish Scenographers.

In February, Danish Media Distributors (DMD), which represents YouSee among others, criticized the rapidly increased rights payments. According to DMD, rights payments for TV content have increased by 70 percent since 2011 and today amounts to a total of DKK 1.2 billion annually. Shortly after this, Nuuday, which owns YouSee, terminated all joint agreements with the Danish film industry. Rights organizations including Copydan were then summoned, but a case as such can take several years to process.

Despite the terminated agreement, YouSee continues to show Danish films and TV productions, which now has resulted in a call for boycott. Producers are exploring legal options to ban YouSee from using their content. This legal battle highlights ongoing tensions in the media industry over content valuation and remuneration in the evolving digital landscape.

Continuing on the subject of remuneration conflicts in the media landscape, the Swedish Writers’ Association has criticized streaming services’ compensation levels for a while. Now, the trade union is taking matters into its own hands. In connection with this year’s book fair, the union is launching a prototype for a fair-trade audiobook streaming service.

“Digitalization has given us opportunities to reach new groups of listeners. But we must have a business model that is financially sustainable, which we have now worked together to develop,” Anja Gatu, the Authors’ Association president commented regarding the new service.

The Authors’ union has taken strategic help from the author and internet analyst Mattias Beijmo, who also is a member of the union.

“The members of the Authors’ union get terribly low compensation from the audiobook publishers. It is an oligopoly, and it is surprising that the Swedish Competition Authority is not looking into this. It’s a dysfunctional market, both for the creators and for the consumers,” Beijmo told Di.

The new platform will be run as an independent company with the Authors’ Association’s stamp, which will show that the author has received a fair compensation for the use of the book. The target group for the platform is primarily passionate consumers.

“Those who consume literature and really care about who and what they read, will of course rather pay for a service where they know that their favorite authors actually get paid,” Beijmo said.

Yesterday, new terms of use came into force at Viaplay, that crackdown on account sharing. However, implementation will be gradual.

The new terms mean that the Viaplay user account will be technically linked to the household. For example, if you want to stream somewhere other than at your home, you need to log in again and enter a new household.

The number of simultaneous streams is limited, which means that you can only watch one sports broadcast on one device at a time. However, it is still possible to watch two different sports broadcasts on two different devices at the same time. The same limitations apply for streaming of movies and series.

Viaplay has previously stated that account sharing and illegal streaming are a big issues for the company and the industry as a whole. Viaplay’s CEO Jørgen Madsen Lindemann previously stated that the company estimates that a third of their premium subscribers share their account details.

Cirka en kvart million danskere interesserer sig for hjemløse Serie A – Mediawatch

Nordics: High viewer interest in unclaimed Serie A rights – Advanced Television

One million Nordic interested in Serie A, but rights go unsold – Broadband TV News

”Content – den evige kingen” – Dagens Media

Norge på topp på strømming, men globale aktører løper ifra – Medier24

Pirat-tv ökar i Norden – fem miljoner tittar illegalt – SVT Nyheter

Piratforbrug af film, serier og sport steg med otte pct. i 2023 – Mediawatch

Pirat-tv ökar i Norden: ”Sverige har en tradition” – Sveriges Radio

Ti prosent av norske hjem strømmer ulovlig ifølge ny undersøkelse – Kampanje

Ny rapport: Ti prosent av norske husstander strømmer sport ulovlig – Dagsavisen

Big windfall ahead if Nordic streamers can defeat password sharing – C21 Media