Korea: Regulator Approves Merger of Streamers Tving and Seezn

South Korea’s the Honest Commerce Fee mentioned Monday that it has permitted the merger between Tving and Seezn, two Korea-based video streaming platforms. The deal was proposed in July this yr.

“We’ve got concluded that (the merger) is not going to restrict competitors available in the market for the provision of content material to over-the-top platforms,” the regulator mentioned in a press release.

CJ ENM is the controlling shareholder in Tving, with tech large Naver and broadcaster JTBC as smaller minority homeowners. Seezn is presently owned by native telecom large KT Corp.

The FTC reasoned that the deal is not going to a lot change the streaming hierarchy in Korea. Netflix is the market chief with a 38% market share within the January-September interval, forward of Wavve with 14% and Tving on 13%. Coupang Play had near 12% with Disney+ on almost 6%. Seezn had 5%.

It additionally mentioned that the merged firm was unlikely to lift subscription costs, attributable to aggressive strain.

And it calculated that program gross sales to 3rd events are too useful for CJ ENM’s subsidiaries to surrender, making it unlikely that the merged Tving-Seezn would be capable to seize all of CJ’s programming output.

Tving reported an annual working lack of KRW208 billion gained ($159 million) final yr. Seezn had working revenue of KRW2.5 billion ($1.91 million) in 2021.

Merger advantages are being touted as together with financial savings on advertising prices and an expanded pool of subscribers that embody KT’s 14 million cellular phone purchasers. TVing was final yr reported to have spent KRW18 billion ($13.8 million) on advertising.