The streaming service Viaplay is making its presence increasingly felt across Central and Eastern Europe.
Just this week it announced that it has signed an agreement with Pickbox NOW to make Viaplay Select available in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.
Viaplay Select offers Viaplay Originals and third-party content and is made available to distribution partners for a fixed fee. With this new agreement, it will be present in a total of 18 markets in Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America.
Pickbox NOW, on the other hand, is a streaming service operated by the Croatian company Pickbox. Launched in 2014, it was one of the first such services in South-East Europe and has been a member of the European VOD Coalition, which also includes Netflix, Sky, Warner Bros. Discovery and indeed Viaplay, for the past two years.
Viaplay’s main B2C offer, as opposed to Viaplay Select, is already present in Poland and the three Baltic countries. However, there are no plans to also make it available in other CEE markets and in fact the company has just delayed its scheduled 2023 launch in Germany, Austria and Switzerland due to cost saving and a weaker macroeconomic environment.
Viaplay’s Polish operation has been particularly successful in terms of take-up and, along with that in the Netherlands, already has over 1 million subscribers. It nevertheless faces an investigation by the country’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) following customers’ complaints about technical problems they have encountered receiving the service.
As part of its international strategy, Viaplay now plans to create four different commercial units covering the markets it is present in. One of these will encompass the Baltics, Poland and the Netherlands and be overseen by Alexander Bastin as its EVP and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).
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