Premiere of first Swedish Netflix original and Allsvenskan
10 April 2019
Netflix premiered its first Swedish original series Quicksand end of last week. Allsvenskan also kicked off its final season before the broadcasting rights changes ownership in 2020. This week we zoom in on Nordic Netflix originals as well as the premium sports market.
Last Friday the first Swedish-language Netflix original Quicksand premiered, based on the book “Störst av allt” by Malin Persson Giolito. The series marks the giant’s second Nordic original, following the Danish The Rain which premiered in May 2018. Netflix continues its strategy of investing heavily in locally produced content, and with the upcoming EU content quota of 30% more investments are likely to follow.
So far, the series seems to have caused a buzz in the region. Comparing Quicksand with The Rain on Google Trends, Quicksand appears to have made a bigger splash than The Rain in Sweden.
Interest over time for search terms Quicksand and The Rain, Sweden
Netflix currently offers 105 “local titles” in Sweden (i e produced in Sweden or by Swedish production companies – and mainly Swedish speaking) out of a grand total of 3116, corresponding to a 3% share. Mediavision will elaborate further on the Neflix content strategy, as well as the outcome of Quicksand and The Rain, in our next blog post.
Netflix share of locally produced titles, Sweden, Q3 2018
Swedish top football league Allsvenskan has kicked off its 2019 season. Bonnier Broadcasting (TV4/ Cmore) holds the broadcasting rights since 1997, and from 2020 Discovery will take over for the first time. Furthermore, last June is was announced that the leagues main sponsor, state-owned Svenska Spel, was to be replaced by Kindred-owned Unibet.
As Allsvenskan is one of the highest valued leagues by consumers, almost at the same level as Premiere league. We definitely have an exciting year ahead of us on the Nordic premium sports market. Mediavision follows the development closely and new data will soon be available in the new sports analysis.
Value index: Ranking by category/league based on distribution of 100 “cashpoints” (SEK), Q2 2018
Another thing to keep an eye out for this month is HBO’s massively popular Game of Thrones (GOT) which premieres its final season on Sunday 14 April. With GOT coming to an end, many are looking to fill the gap. Amazon is chasing a GOT of its own and acquired the rights to JRR Tolkiens The Lord of The Rings in 2017.
Lastly, nearly two weeks have passed since NENT was listed on the stock exchange as a separate company on March 28th. Since the split MTG’s stock has remained stable around the SEK115 mark. Meanwhile, the NENT stock initially climbed but has since stabilized at around SEK220 per share, placing NENT at a market cap of roughly SEK14.7 billion. This can be compared to Bonnier Broadcast which is in the process of being sold to Telia for SEK 9.2 billion.
Mediavision blogs:
Who will win the Nordic streaming war?
Competition on the Nordic streaming market is ramping up with several new services about to launch. Content investments are escalating and only partly offset by price increases. In the US, Netflix recently announced +13-18% on subscription fees.
Mediavision press releases:
Household media spend on the rise
Swedish households continuously spend more money on media services. During 2018 an average Swedish household spent 450 SEK per month on media subscriptions. The appetite for video services remain high, video spend has increased by […].
Industry news:
Telenor acquires majority stake in DNA
Norwegian telco Telenor has acquired a majority stake of 54% in Finnish TV operator DNA. The deal closed at €1.5 billion which equates to €20.9 per share. The DNA stock closed at €19.5 per share on Monday.
Evening press media investments decrease
Evening press media investments decreased by almost 36% during March according to Mediebyråbarometern. Media investments across all categories of print decreased by 16.7 percent during March.
BBC & Discovery launch joint OTT service
BBC has signed a £300 million deal to sell its programmes, agreeing to provide natural history shows to a new global streaming service run by Discovery. The service is expected to launch everywhere but the UK, Ireland and China by the end of 2019.
Pinterest sets IPO valuation at $10.6B
The San Francisco-based social media platform Pinterest has updated its IPO range to $15-17 per share, valuing the company at $10.6 billion, compared to the previous valuation of $12.3 billion.
Snap is building an ad network
Snap, which owns Snapchat, has announced its building a mobile ad network. The platform which is called Snap Audience Network is akin to Facebook’s Audience Network which was launched in 2014.
Harper Collins doubles profit
The UK publisher Harper Collins doubled its profits due to the highly lucrative JRR Tolkien TV deal with Amazon worth $250 million. The book publisher said the Amazon rights deal had fueled record profits of £24.9 million for the year to the end of June 2018.
Cord-cutting to slow in the US
US cord-cutting is slowing down according to Digital TV Research. The UK-based analyst says the US will lose 3 million pay TV subscribers in 2019, which is less than the decline of 3.8 million last year.
Storytel Q1 earnings in line with forecast
Audiobook streaming service Storytel has reported its Q1 earnings for 2019 which were in line with the forecast. Storytel reached an average of 834,300 paying subscribers during the first quarter of 2019, which were in line with the forecast of 835,000.
Mediavision in the news:
