CEE TV industry news stories
- chrisdz3
- Apr 3
- 5 min read
Chris Dziadul, April 3, 2025
United Group completes asset sale
United Group has completed the sale of SBB Serbia to e& PPF Telecom, as well as the Net TV Plus business and the group’s sports broadcasting rights for the Western Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia) to Telekom Srbija. This follows obtaining relevant regulatory approvals for the transactions, which were signed off on February 11 and have a combined enterprise value of €1.5 billion. United Group notes that it will continue to own and operate its key media outlets in Serbia, and that apart from the potential sale of Telemach BH d.o.o. Sarajevo and Telemach Crna Gora d.o.o. Podgorica it has no plans to divest any other assets in the near-term.
SVOD in Poland: the stats
The average SVOD customer in Poland now pays for 2.2 subscriptions. Furthermore, according to Wavemaker’s (Group M) VideoTrack 9 study, Netflix is their most common choice, with seven out of 10 customers who invest in video, across various payment models, opting for the service. It is followed by Max with 22% and Prime Video with 16%. The study also notes that after several years of stabilisation, the torrent niche has slightly shrunk, with only one in 10 viewers now downloading series and movies from such sites. Furthermore, seven out of 10 online viewers at least occasionally pay for video access, most often through a subscription model. When it comes to payment methods, BLIK is the preferred choice. According to the study, the percentage of paying viewers has stabilised at last year’s level, but their basket and monthly budget for streaming have slightly increased. All told, the percentage of SVOD customers spending more than PLN50 (around €12) a month on streaming has risen over the last year from 21% to 28% of the total.
New potential buyer for Poland’s TVN
Ringier Axel Springer Polska (RASP) has emerged as another potential buyer of the Polish national commercial broadcaster TVN. According to a report in Puls Biznesu, quoting unnamed sources, it is planning a bid as part of a consortium with the private equity fund CVC Capital Partners. The Polish billionaire Michał Sołowow and a consortium headed by WP Holding have already expressed an interest in buying TVN, which is currently owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Several potential foreign bidders, including MFE-Media for Europe and Hungary’s TV2, have already dropped out of contention, while Grzegorz Hajdarowicz, the founder of Gremi Media Group, has been previously mentioned as a possible buyer.
Lithuanian broadcaster opts for Backscreen
The Lithuanian national commercial broadcaster LNK has begun cooperating with Backscreen, a leading OTT technology provider for the Baltic region that was spun out of the Latvian telco Tet. The latter’s technological solution, which will be implemented in the second half of this year, and hosted in the Tet cloud, controlled by EU institutions, will give LNK viewers access to a wider range of content, including exclusive access to TV series, shows and other programmes up to a month before they air on television. LNK TV Group operates five free live TV channels and the news portal lnk.lt. It is the largest and most popular broadcaster in Lithuania, attracting more than 950,000 viewers per day, or every third TV viewer in the country.
Telemach expands sports offer
Telemach has added all Arena Sport channels to its EON packages in Croatia and Slovenia. As of the beginning of this month, Telemach users can access Arena Sport Premium 1, Arena Sport 1, 2, 3, 4, Arena Fight, Arena eSport channels, and, exclusively for both Croatia and Slovenia, NBA TV and Premier League TV. Given that they can already watch Sportklub, Sport TV and Eurosport, Telemach provides them with more sports channels than any other operator in the two countries.
RTL Hungary partners with smartclip
RTL Group’s adtech business and RTL Hungary have entered into a strategic technology partnership aimed at enhancing the latter’s digital and linear advertising capabilities. As part of this collaboration, RTL Hungary has adopted smartx, smartclip’s holistic, full-stack ad-server and supply-side platform (SSP). The rollout of smartclip’s adtech solutions has been successfully implemented into RTL Hungary’s adtech stack, with the first 100 campaigns launched on RTL+ and rtl.hu, and the full transition to smartx completed on April 1st.
Russian streamer launches in Turkey
The Russian streaming service ivi has reportedly made its debut in Turkey. According to the Russian media, the service in Turkey can be accessed on a mobile app available on Google Play and is offering viewers mostly Turkish drama series from Dizi, along with local TV channels. Further details about the offer can be seen on https://www.ivi.tv.
Top spot for Slovakia’s Jojko
Jojko was the most watched kids channel in Slovakia in March. According to its operator Joj Group, it is available in 1.7 million households and has benefited from taking over some of the programming of another kids channel named Ťuki, which closed earlier this year. Joj Group is one of the leading commercial broadcasters in Slovakia. In a separate development, the company has announced that its streaming service Joj play, which has just celebrated its third anniversary, now has over 600,000 users. According to Joj Group, Joj play is the only “purely Slovak” streaming service in the country.
Russia’s Orion offers technical support
The Orion Group has provided Russian TV channels whose broadcasting was interrupted on the ABS-2A satellite with the ability to distribute a signal from its satellite platform Express-80 in FTA mode. ABS-2A is owned by Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) and designed to provide communications and broadcasting services in Russia, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Orion Group notes that on this occasion its support was used by – amongst others – the channels Kinoman, Konny Mir, RBC, RU TV, TV21M, Yu, Solntse and Muz.
Czech CRA hires Petr Holý
Petr Holý has been appointed the technical director at the Czech national transmission company České Radiokomunikace (CRA). Holý has been active in the telecommunications sector for more than 20 years and worked in various positions for T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom in the Czech Republic and Germany, as well as CETIN. Six months ago, he moved to the position of director for cloud services at Cloud4com, which is owned by CRA.
New role for Hrvatski Telekom executive
Marijana Bačić, a member of the management board and COO Business at Hrvatski Telekom (HT), will also assume the role of Director of Combis on May 1. She will take over from Goran Car, who has held the position for the past five years. Combis is a Croatian B2B information and communications technology service company wholly owned by HT.
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