10 million streaming subscriptions in the Nordics

Streaming video continues to grow rapidly in the Nordics, Mediavision concludes in its recently published analysis of the Nordic TV and video market. An increasing number of consumers subscribe to SVOD and year-on-year the growth is 800,000 new subscribing households. Now, in spring 2019, there are approximately 10 million streaming subscriptions in the Nordics, spread out over 5.8 million households. The growth is driven both by “stacking”, i.e. households signing up for an increasing number of services, and actors offering new packaging deals.

Subscription-based online video, SVOD, increases quickly in the Nordics. During spring 2019 the number of subscribing households has increased by 16 percent compared to the same period last year. This in turn translates to 800 000 additional subscribing households. In total 5.8 million households subscribe to at least one SVOD service, equivalent to a penetration of 52 percent of all Nordic households.

In conjunction with the increasing SVOD penetration, the number of subscriptions per household is also increasing (a phenomenon often called “stacking”). Nordic SVOD households subscribe to 1.7 services on average, which marks another significant increase year-on-year. Today, there are roughly 10 million SVOD subscriptions across the Nordic region.

The increasing number of subscriptions can partly be explained by new forms of service packaging. For instance, telecom operators offering streaming services bundled with traditional TV or broadband is becoming more common. Operators’ sales of so called buy-through streaming has increased significantly since last year.

“Revenues from streaming is growing across all Nordic markets, explained by both increased penetration and stacking. The online video market is moving towards maturity and penetration is already high in an international comparison. We also know that new services will launch in 2019 and 2020 and Mediavision expects a continued strong Nordic market growth. Consumers gradually increase their spending and it has become more and more apparent to them that the best and most attractive content is found among these services,” says Marie Nilsson, CEO of Mediavision.