Less than two months from the end of its U.S. streaming service, Nordic entertainment hub Viaplay is back up and running as a channel on Prime Video. If you have Prime Video, you can check out Viaplay with a free 7-day trial. If you don’t have Prime Video, it’s easy to give that a try with a free 30-day trial.
Prime Video is home to dozens of great add-on channels, and nearly all of them have weeklong free trials.
Viaplay’s initial launch in the U.S. and Canada helped push the streamer’s international subscriber total to 7.64 million, but the honeymoon was short-lived. In June 2023, Viaplay downgraded its future financial forecasts and CEO Anders Jensen resigned; Jorgen Madsen Lindemann, who was the former CEO of Viaplay’s previous parent company, took over the chief executive role.
Despite the C-suite drama, executives were still optimistic about its future in the U.S. thanks to a strategy of focusing on its core content and not trying to outspend English-language streamers. Viaplay’s chief commercial officer for North America Vanda Rapti told The Streamable that she thought that it was well within the streamer’s reach to be profitable in America quickly.
“We are not aspiring to have the 20,000 hours that we have in the Nordics [in the U.S.],” she said. “Unlike other streamer launches in the U.S. where the investments and risks are high, Viaplay is mostly monetizing on its European investments, with the incremental spend in its U.S. operations being minimal, which won’t make profitability a difficult game in the U.S.”
Less than a month into Jensen’s tenure, Viaplay announced that it would be closing down its standalone streaming services in the United States and the United Kingdom. While the company did not continue releasing U.S. subscriber totals, Viaplay cut off the marketing of its service in the States immediately following the announcement.
American fans of Nordic Noir and other types of Scandinavian programming can also watch the service via Roku, Xfinity, and Xumo.
Viaplay
Viaplay is a video on demand service focused on Nordic storytelling with more than 1,500 hours of award-winning content. The content library includes “Trom,” “Furia,” and “Partisan.” The line-up also includes Viaplay’s provocative young adult drama “Threesome,” a broad range of compelling documentaries, and much more.