The Polish national commercial broadcaster TVN does not regard Netflix as a threat as the SVOD service does not carry advertising.
Furthermore, said Maciej Maciejowski, the member of the management board at TVN responsible or business development, it does not offer Polish content. However, Maciejowski did concede that although Netflix has yet to make its debut in Poland – most believe this will now happen in 2016 – it is already widely pirated and very popular.
Maciejowski was of the view that the cost of receiving Netflix, likely to be in the region of PLN40 a month, would be too high for most viewers in Poland.
Significantly, he also said that licensing content to Netflix, and indeed YouTube, locally would be a huge threat to TVN and other companies as they would lose out on ad revenue.
TVN, which is owned by Scripps Networks, has a presence in the Polish on demand market through a service named Player.
According to Maciejowski. it added a subscription element to its offer as recently as last week.
