Copyright © Emerce 2023

Starting next summer, Viaplay will have a cheaper subscription with advertising served to the viewer. This should reduce the growth in subscriber numbers, now: -3%.

They themselves call it a hybrid streaming package that will be released next summer. Its purpose is to provide a flexible solution for people who do not want or cannot pay eighteen euros a month, but still want the Viaplay offer. In addition, it is a new source of revenue from the business market.

Earlier this morning, Viaplay published its first quarter results. In the notes thereto, CEO Jørgen Madsen Lindemann detailed plans to get the company back on a growth path.

The new, cheaper subscription is one of them. The crackdown on sharing accounts outside a household is another. The two go hand in hand.

"In addition, we are going to launch a new sports channel in most markets where we operate," he said. It is not known how that compares with the collaboration between Viaplay and Talpa to turn SBS9 into a sports channel.

The quarterly figures are nothing to write home about, but that was already known. The top of the media company has been implementing a new strategy since last year and it costs money. For that it received generous new capital at the end of 2023.

In the first three months of 2024, Viaplay Group realized sales of 413 million euros, operating profit of 41 million euros and free cash flow of -132 million. The full-year revenue target is 1.5 billion euros and pre-tax profit around zero.

Almost half of revenue (44%) comes from streaming subscriptions and 19% from advertising business. Sublicensing is reselling content to Netflix and Amazon.

Viaplay has 4.9 million streaming subscribers and saw a 3.6 percent decline in revenue in this segment. Sublicensing offset that revenue decline, ending at plus 5.6 percent.

Sales of digital advertising increased, but due to the decline in TV and radio in Scandinavia, advertising revenue fell 3.6 percent.

© The Content Exchange, source News