Chris Dziadul, August 22, 2024
SkyShowtime partners with Play
The Polish telco Play has become SkyShowtime’s first B2B partner in Poland. As a results, its customers will be able to subscribe to SkyShowtime’s Standard plus plan (without ads) and in addition watch the new premier linear channels SkyShowtime 1 and SkyShowtime 2. Back in April, SkyShowtime announced its first B2B partnership in Central and Eastern Europe in Romania, with its full offer – the streaming service and two channels – launching on Digi. The streaming service SkyShowtime made its debut in Poland, along with several other markets in Central and Eastern Europe, in February last year.
United Group sale update
Saudi Arabia’s STC and the UAE’s e& have reportedly submitted bids for United Group. However, according to Capital, the US investment fund Providence is also in the picture, as are Austria’s A1 Group and Hungary's 4iG. The latter two are nevertheless targeting United Group’s operation in Serbia rather than its entire business in Southeast Europe. United Group is majority owned by BC Partners and valued at around €8 billion.
Canal+ launches sports channels
Canal+ Polska has launched four channels dedicated specifically to coverage of the Champions League. Known as Canal+ Extra1, Canal+ Extra 2, Canal+ Extra 3 and Canal+ Extra 4, they showed games from the preliminary rounds of the competition earlier this week and will be joined by Canal+ Extra 5, Canal+ Extra 6 and Canal+ Extra 7 when the Champions League gets under way in earnest next month. Separately, Poland’s leading cable operator Vectra has announced that it will once more offer coverage of the Champions League to its customers following an agreement with Canal+. It will show games on Canal+ Extra 1-7 and Canal+ 360.
Streaming viewership grows in Poland
The share of streaming viewing in Polish TV homes stood at 8.6% in July. This, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge, was up from 8.3% the previous month. YouTube remained the streaming leader for the second month in a row, with its share unchanged at 2.1%. Netflix gained 0.2 percentage points, reaching a 1.9% share of video content viewing on TV, and other streamers had a combined total of 4.6%. In July, Polish viewers spent an average of 3 hours and 28 minutes daily in front of their TV screens. This was five minutes less than in June. The top 10 most watched programmes were dominated by the final phase of Euro 2024 and the beginning of the Olympic Games in Paris.
Indecision on Slovenian receiver licence fees
The Slovenian government is reportedly having reservations about raising receiver licence fees to fund the public broadcaster RTV Slovenia. Although the Ministry of Finance previously announced that the fees would increase by 10%, from €12.75 to €14.02 a month, at the beginning of 2025, the move is considered unpopular by the public and has been resisted by previous governments. Receiver licence fees are the main source of funding of RTV Slovenia and have been unchanged since 2012.
Starlight Media promotes Maria Kostina
Maria Kostina has been appointed the content director, acquisitions & partnership with OTT, at Ukraine’s Starlight Media. Kostina, who previously headed the TV rights procurement department, has more than eight years of experience in acquiring content, in particular for OTT, free TV and pay-TV channels. She has been at Starlight Media since March 2023, prior to which she was the content acquisition manager at Megogo.
New board member for Telemach Hrvatska
United Group’s Telemach Hrvatska has strengthened its management structure by appointing Damir Vrsajkovic as a member of its management board and chief product development director. The former executive director for product development at Telemach, as a member of the management board he will be in charge of product strategy, which includes product and device management. The Telemach board, in addition to the president Adrian Jezina and the newly joined Vrsajkovic, has three more members in charge of different business areas: Matija Mandic for the area of finance, Danijela Bistricki Morovic who manages technology and Mislav Galler who is the chief commercial director.
Tetyana Lukynyuk to head Google Ukraine
Tetyana Lukynyuk has been appointed to the new position of director of Google Ukraine. She has over 25 years of experience working in international companies and was most recently B2C director at Kyivstar, where she managed sales, marketing and customer service operations.
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© Chris Dziadul, 2024
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