The main topics this week:

• Bonnier News becomes majority shareholder of Readly
• Netflix announces premiere dates for two new Swedish originals
• TV4 grabs rights for popular TV show from SVT

Online video in Finland is on the rise. During this spring, subscribing SVOD households have passed 1.5 million, corresponding to a penetration of 61 percent. This equals an annual growth of 8 percent in subscribing households. As in the other Nordic countries, the growth can largely be attributed to the packaging of both traditional TV and streaming services by telecom operators. The number of households that hold a bundled, so-called B-SVOD, streaming subscription has almost doubled in a year. Close to 400 000 households subscribe to a bundled streaming service in Finland, spring 2023.

The bundled SVOD growth is significant in all Nordic countries, but highest in Finland. However, the share of households that have this type of streaming service is considerably higher in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Furthermore, the average household spend on TV and streaming is noticeably lower in Finland; EUR 32 per month compared to an average of EUR 50 in the entire Nordic region.

– Penetration as well as household spend on streaming is growing roughly as fast in Finland as in the rest of the Nordic countries. But overall, Finland is still behind the rest of the Nordic countries, following a historically weaker pay TV market, comments Fredrik Liljeqvist at Mediavision. The recent growth is to a high degree explained by the bundling of different media and access packages, creating a “1+1 = 3” offering to the households. Mediavision believes that this will be one of the main roads forward, as the market moves towards maturity and new subscribers are increasingly hard to come by.