International media group Discovery has finalised a new multi-year carriage deal with telecoms operator Telenor across the Nordic region, adding the distribution of the Dplay streaming offering into the agreement.
The new deal will afford Telenor and its pay-television and internet service provider Canal Digital customers access to 11 Discovery-owned channels, including Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2. Telenor will also be able to distribute Dplay via its own streaming platform Telenor Stream.
Tine Austvoll Jensen, chief executive officer of Discovery Networks Norway said: “We are also very pleased that their customers now also have the opportunity to include our streaming service Dplay as part of their TV subscription – where they can both see all our content directly and dig into our large content archive.”
The current distribution agreement between the two media companies was agreed in February 2016 following an intense period of negotiation that had involved Discovery pulling its channels from Telenor.
Discovery currently hold rights to several premium sports properties in the region including the top-tier domestic football leagues in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It also holds rights to the Olympic Games across the Nordics as part of its €1.3bn ($1.44bn) acquisition of Olympics broadcast rights in Europe (excluding Russia) from 2018 to 2024.
Rival media group Nordic Entertainment Group (Nent) extended its own distribution agreement with Telenor in November last year. The pair had previous reached an agreement to combine Nent’s Viasat Consumer satellite pay-television operations with Canal Digital.
Discovery is currently involved in an ongoing and public distribution battle in Denmark with quadruple play service provider YouSee. Since January 1, YouSee customers have not had access to Discovery content. Discovery dramatically reduced the cost of Dplay Sport in order to offset the drop in exposure.