#Nordic Streamer Viaplay Sells U.K. Business Amid Corporate Overhaul

Viaplay has sold its U.K. operations back to Premiere Sports and will be exiting the Polish and Baltic markets by summer 2025, the company announced Friday, part of a corporate overhaul aimed at returning the money-losing Nordic streamer back to profit.

Viaplay CEO Jørgen Madsen Lindemann, who replaced Anders Jensen as boss in July, said the company had reached a deal to sell its U.K. business back to Premiere Sports, a year after acquiring it, for $38 million (£30 million), subject to regulatory approval. Viaplay’s U.K. operations primarily consisted of soccer rights, including Premiere’s rights to Spain’s La Liga. The business was part of an ambitious international expansion plan, launched by Jensen, to take Viaplay global with a focus on high-end original drama and top-notch live sports.

But those plans came crashing back to earth earlier this year after sluggish advertising sales slumped and increased subscriber churn led to disastrous second-quarter results. The ambitious Jensen was out and the pragmatic Lindemann was in, tasked with slashing costs. Viaplay has fired nearly a third of its staff and Lindemann announced plans to dump all international operations outside the Nordic markets and the Netherlands. Lindemann said the “route to profitability” in its non-core territories in the U.K., Poland and the Baltics was “not clear or realistic.” He said the negative cash effect of exiting these loss-making operations will be “approximately SEK 2.2 billion ($210 million) over the coming years.”

Viaplay’s third quarter results, released on Friday — the Q3 numbers had been delayed twice amid the corporate turmoil at the company — showed sales up 7.4 percent to $434 million (SEK 4.5 billion) year-on-year, but an operating loss of $51 million and net debt of $381 million.

Lindemann said Viaplay continues “to feel the pressure” of its commitments to high “original content costs, built-in sports rights inflation and adverse currency effects” and said the company is in the process of “renegotiation of our credit arrangements and the proposed injection of new equity into the Group.” It is likely Viaplay will issue new shares as part of a move to raise capital.

For the full year, Viaplay expects operating losses of between $96 million – $110 million (SEK 1 billion – 1.15 billion) mainly due to the sinkhole of its money-losing international operations.