This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on May 20th, 2024. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

As the streaming market slows, unholy alliances are forming and everyone is returning to tried-and-tested plays. And the safest bet of all is sports. That is why the American entertainment giants are now fighting over the rights.

Nothing has shaped Swedish pay television more over the past decade than British football. The channels behind it have changed names, merged, and been separated — MTG became Nent and eventually Viaplay; Canal Plus was acquired by TV4 and became C More, then folded into TV4 Play. But they all had one thing in common: they bet that the Premier League would be the key to winning paying television subscribers.

In many respects, they were right. Viewers were considerably more loyal to their favourite club than to any particular TV service. Add in special events like the Champions League, and you have the backdrop for the inflated prices for sports rights in the Nordics over the past fifteen years.

But even when you won the bidding war for sports rights, you could still end up losing. Look at Viaplay, which has effectively erased its entire stock market value over the past year. And while it tries to rescue itself, vultures are circling. Large, American, well-funded vultures.

The media world was shaken when Disney+ in Sweden recently acquired the rights to the UEFA Europa League and Conference League. Viaplay had previously held them but lost them at renewal. Viaplay has also been forced to sell some Premier League matches to Swedish Amazon Prime Video to reduce its payment commitments. American tech giants are effectively profiting at Viaplay’s expense.

But this newly found appetite for sports rights is not happening only in Sweden. Globally, streaming services are opening up to this category. This week, Netflix announced that — for the first time ever — it will invest in live sport, having signed a deal with the NFL to broadcast selected games on Christmas Day. Last August, Apple TV+ signed a ten-year deal with Major League Soccer worth around 27 billion kronor. Amazon, like Netflix, has had an NFL deal for several years.

The reason for this broadening is a slowing streaming market that demands a wider offering. Customers no longer want to pay for all services simultaneously and are being more selective. Building a proposition that works for “the whole family” is therefore a strategy that virtually every streaming service is now pursuing.

The pressured market is also producing unexpected alliances. Arch-rivals Disney+ and Max (formerly HBO Max and Discovery+, now launching in Sweden) are already offering a bundled package in the US. Together with Hulu, partially owned by Disney, the three services can be purchased together at a discount — a structure that would have been entirely unthinkable two years ago. Back then, HBO Max and Disney+ were rivals; now they are trying to acquire customers together. It would be like SvD and Dagens Nyheter launching a joint subscription offer.

The winners in this development are the customers. Where you once had to buy many separate subscriptions from the streaming giants, the offers are now better and more competitive. New bundles are appearing. The structure is starting to resemble old cable television, where you bought large packages and got a little of everything. The trade-off is lower content quality than before — and in some cases for more money, as services like Viaplay have raised their prices sharply.

The big losers are the owners of sports rights and drama producers. Even though interest in sport is high, it is unlikely that prices will be driven back to the heights they once reached — at least not in the Nordics. When Amazon and Disney+ buy rights in Sweden, it is certainly at a steep discount. Sport matters — but the era of record prices is over. The same applies to drama. After a few golden years, it is the expensive productions that disappear first. Do not expect investments on the scale of Ronja Rövardotter for a couple of years.

Max is launching in Sweden imminently — the merger of Discovery+ and HBO Max. A broader, more popular service designed to have something for the whole family. That position is not unique to them. But their strategy is telling for what the pressured streaming market looks like in 2024: merged services, broad content — and a little sport to round it all off.