Nent chief points to ‘tip of a consolidation iceberg’ in media

The head of one of Europe’s fastest-growing streaming services has called the recent burst of media deals “the tip of a consolidation iceberg” driven by traditional television players rushing to catch up with consumer behaviour.

Anders Jensen, chief executive of the Nordic Entertainment Group, described the coming wave of dealmaking as he announced the launch of his Viaplay service in the Netherlands early next year, the tenth country in its international expansion.

Stockholm-based Nent has styled itself as Europe’s answer to Netflix, and will enter the Dutch market with a mix of Nordic drama, German football and highly prized rights to Formula One, which on Thursday the company announced it had won from cable operator Ziggo.

Viaplay is one of Europe’s only streaming-focused, entertainment and sport services competing with the multimarket footprint of US streamers and the only European service in second spot to Netflix within a region. Jensen is aiming for “at least” 4.5m subscribers outside Viaplay’s Nordic base over the next four years.

He described this week’s WarnerMedia and Discovery merger as a clarifying moment for local European players, which would need to build scale to thrive in a market dominated by streaming.

“This is the tip of a consolidation iceberg because the changes in consumer behaviour are so dramatic,” he said. “Scale needs to be created so you can capitalise on those changes. If you are a local broadcaster, you will be subscale so you will be searching for consolidation opportunities.”

Jensen said he already had “quite a few inbound” inquiries from Dutch broadcasters that wanted to “partner up” in the market — a model of combining local content with Nent’s platform that could be used in several markets.

The Nent chief anticipates opportunities arising to buy traditional television groups and migrate strong local-language catalogues to a Viaplay platform. But given the dearth of streaming assets in Europe at present, it made more sense for Viaplay “go in and build rather than pay a premium for existing businesses”.

Some analysts have speculated that Nent itself could become an acquisition target after building out its service in the Nordic and Baltic region and expanding to Poland, the US and Netherlands over the next 12 months.

Jensen said there were “some out there that we know have been looking at us”.

“But that is never a strategy to be a target. We are building something that is a long-term sustainable business . . . for many, many years,” he said. “I would rather see us as a consolidator.”

After a strong 2020, Nent shares are off close to 16 per cent since January. Jensen ascribed that “to market circumstances, 100 per cent”.

He added: “It has nothing to do with us, we are ticking the boxes.”

Shares in Nent rose almost 5 per cent in morning trading on Thursday.