Service Stacking takes the Nordic Video Market to Next Level

The Nordic video market remains one of the strongest and most progressive in the world, with Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland enjoying high penetration of superfast broadband, wide adoption of the English language, a high level of disposable income and an overall thirst for entertainment.

Joanna Wright, Senior Analyst at Futuresource Consulting shared the latest findings, stating that “2020 saw the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) consolidate its position as some of the most advanced digital markets globally, aided by strong SVoD adoption as the sector capitalised on the thirst for content during the pandemic. Existing Pan-Nordic services and the arrival of new services helped drive service stacking to take an already well-established market to new heights”.

According to Futuresource, the Nordic region is famed for being a strong, early adopter market, with Netflix being a key driver of this in the past. However, with SVoD competition ramping up in the Nordic region, we have started to see a slowdown in the growth for Netflix.  It remains the bedrock of the Nordic SVoD market, leading the sector across all four markets. It grew by just 7% to over 4 million subscribers in 2020, with local service Viaplay & the newly launched Disney+ becoming the key drivers of growth across the region.

Furthermore, interest in SVoD has grown in popularity amongst older demographics. Circa 30% of new users to Netflix (those who had signed up to the service in the last 6 months to a year from June 2020) were aged 45+.

Looking forward to 2021, SVoD growth is predicted to slow, as it is thought many consumers would have brought their subscription forward during the pandemic. Netflix growth is also slowing due to the already high penetration rate, whilst password sharing is high.  According to Futuresource’s LWD survey from summer 2020, 46% of Netflix subscribers in Sweden share their password with one or more people.

The transactional video market remains healthy and ahead of other European markets in terms of EST and iVoD engagement. Boosted by the stay-at-home measures during the pandemic, transactional digital video spend growth was spearheaded by Sweden, up 10% in 2020. While Norway and Denmark also witnessed growth, this was a more muted performance than anticipated due to the lack of new released content. Despite this, momentum on catalogue is helping to drive the overall sector.

Additionally, rapid broadband speeds and a high penetration of smart TVs have played a key role in accelerating the transactional market in the Nordics in recent years. Futuresource estimates in 2021 c.85% of households will have a smart TV in the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) – the highest level in Europe, providing a seamless way for consumers to view premium streamed content and making finding and viewing transactional content much quicker and easier.

For more information about the Global Video Insights series, please contact Kailash.Morjaria@Futuresource-hq.com or visit here to see the range of markets covered.

About the author

Joanna Wright

^{Joanna is a senior market analyst with 15 years’ experience, working at Futuresource since 2005. Following seven years in the imaging division, Joanna joined the Entertainment Content Delivery team and is closely involved in researching, analysing and consulting on key content industry developments worldwide, with a particular focus on the digital distribution of entertainment content. Joanna graduated from the University of Bath with a BA in European Studies specialising in French and Italian.}