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| The poster for drama "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" is seen on KT Studio Genie's streaming platform, Seezn. Screenshot from Seezn |
By Baek Byung-yeul
Competition in the nation's over-the-top (OTT) media or video streaming business is becoming increasingly fierce as domestic operators grow bigger through mergers, challenging No. 1 player Netflix. With domestic players increasing the number of customers through mergers, domination of the streaming business here will now amount to a contest between who supplies better and more distinctive content, industry analysts and officials said Monday.
On July 14, telecommunications company KT announced it has agreed to a deal with CJ ENM to merge its streaming service platform, Seezn, with the latter's platform, Tving.
Tving was spun off from CJ ENM in 2020, with CJ ENM holding a 57 percent stake. Seezn is 100 percent owned by KT Studio Genie, the media content subsidiary of KT.
Through the deal, Seezn will be absorbed by Tving and the merger will eventually make Tving the No. 2 domestic streaming platform with over 5 million monthly active users, edging out the current No. 2 player, Wavve, a streaming platform launched by SK Telecom and three major TV broadcasters ― KBS, MBC and SBS.
According to data tracker Mobile Index, Netflix led the market with 11.17 million monthly active users in June, followed by Wavve with 4.23 million, Tving with 4.02 million and Coupang Play with 3.73 million. Seezn was the No. 6 player with 1.56 million users, following Disney Plus with 1.68 million.
A KT spokesman said the company expects the merger will benefit both KT and CJ ENM.
"Competition in the local streaming market has intensified due to fierce competition between overseas streaming service providers and local companies, and we expect that we will be able to improve our competitiveness faster through the integration of the two companies," the official said. "In the future, the strengths of the two companies will be combined to create various synergy effects in terms of the quality and quantity of content."
Choi Min-ha, a researcher at Samsung Securities, said the linkage between KT and CJ ENM should create synergy, as the market share of Tving will be increased through a strategy that makes Tving more accessible to KT's mobile carrier service users.
"CJ ENM and KT previously signed a memorandum of understanding to promote business cooperation in various areas such as music and broadcasting, and the merger is expected to maximize synergy in the media and content businesses," the researcher said.
At a time when the competition in the streaming market is getting fierce, an industry official said on condition of anonymity, "Many people are subscribing to multiple streaming service platforms, so it will be more important for platform operators to constantly provide quality and attractive content to users."
