Yesterday the European Commission approved Discovery Networks’ acquisition of TV4 Media’s OTT rights from Telia for the two Nordic countries.

The deal means that customers in Finland and Sweden of Discovery Networks’ on-demand service Dplay can now have access to Telia’s League channel package on top of C More’s sports channels and TV4’s channels for Sweden and MTV’s TV channels for Finland.  Those include TV4, Sjuan, TV 12, TV4 Fakta, TV4 Guld, TV4 Film, Sportkanalen, C More Hockey, C More Fotboll, C More Golf, C More Sport, C More Live 1-5 for Sweden, and for Finland MTV3, Sub, AVA, C More Juniori, C More Max, C More Sport 1, C More Sport 2. 

Excluded from the agreement are C More Movie channels. 

The deal comes as a result of a commitment from the Swedish telco group Telia to licence standalone OTT rights in Sweden and Finland to other market players, after the European Commission’s approval of its acquisition of TV4 Media (formerly Bonnier Broadcasting), completed last December. 

“We have run a process to license our OTT rights with several players, fully in line with the commitments,” said Allison Kirkby, President and CEO of Telia Company. “Today’s approval [from the European Commission] means that we can continue to move forward and realise the advantages for our customers of combining our leading mobile and fixed networks with the most successful commercial media house in the Nordics. And, I’m happy to be able to announce to Discovery Network’s customers that they can now have access to the best Nordic OTT content from TV4, C More and MTV.”

“We are very pleased to have reached an agreement with Telia on this popular content which will be a good complement to Dplay's already strong offering,” said Nicklas Norrby, managing director Discovery Sweden.  His colleague Leah Hooper, CEO at Discovery Finland added: “our streaming service is the fastest growing in the Nordic countries and we are pleased that Telia saw us as a suitable partner.”