The leading media player in the Baltic region is making streaming its ‘number one priority,’ says CEO Christian Anting.

TV3 Group holds the distinction of being the leading provider of media services in the Baltics.

Christian Anting

The company traces its roots back to 1996, when Sweden’s Modern Times Group (MTG), at its peak a powerhouse in the industry across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), entered the Baltic region with the launch of a free-to-air (FTA) channel named TV3.

Just over 20 years later in 2017, MTG’s assets in the Baltic were acquired by the global investment firm Providence Equity Partners. At around the same time, Providence also bought what was a leading regional telco operator named Bité Group. According to Christian Anting, TV3 Group’s CEO, Providence’s investment rationale at the time was the convergence of telecommunications and media services.

Today, TV3 Group (a brand name with the company’s legal name actually being All Media Group) encompasses everything that used to be the MTG businesses in the region.

According to Anting, the company is organised so that it operates a portfolio of FTA channels in each of the three markets: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The main channels are TV3, and secondary ones TV6 and TV8, with numbers fluctuating depending on the market. All the channels are ad-funded and market leaders, and moreover, says Anting, “TV3 is by far the biggest media group in the region and the linear channels are big national broadcasters in each of the territories.”

Anting also points out that the group’s FTA business includes a substantial radio portfolio. Like the linear TV services, the radio stations are financed by advertising. Alongside these, TV3 Group also has a streaming business which by its nature is pan-Baltic. It is localised in each market and employs the brand name Go3.

“Go3 is today the largest streamer in the region and we are one of the few – if not the only – region in the EU where a traditional broadcaster is the number one streamer, rather than one of the US or global players,” observes Anting.

When discussing important recent developments at TV3 Group, Anting says that “the number one priority is the transformation of our business towards streaming.”

The Masked Singer (aka Voice in the Mask) does very well in Latvia

Anting joined the company in 2018 so this was the transition he had to steer the company though, developing a streaming business that would allow TV3 Group to diversify its financial situation.

This certainly now appears to be bearing fruit. In 2023, it reached the “very important milestone of half a million subscribers,” and – more importantly – this year finds itself on track to “being on the revenue side and profitable. Not as much as FTA, though by revenue already the largest and profitability is on track to become the main contributor.”

While Anting concedes the company still relies heavily on its broadcasting business (and one of the success factors of streaming is all the content that gets produced by linear), Anting believes that “we have so far managed to balance this transition and build a platform that we see can support our overall business going forwards and balancing out the types of revenues the company has.”

He also says that the half a million subscribers Go3 already has represents 20% of the households in the Baltic region and “now our target is to clearly double that, to get to one million.”

Interestingly, Go3’s success is quite even across the three countries though also linked to the size of the market, with Lithuania performing slightly better than Latvia and Estonia. However, “finding the right content mix,” says Anting, “is important.”

He also points out that Go3 is at an advantage in Lithuania and Latvia, where Bité is active as a sales channel for the streaming service. Bité doesn’t have a presence in Estonia, however.

Although TV3 Group’s channels share the same brand across its markets, they have completely localised programme schedules. This is also the case with Go3, which according to Anting, last year produced around 100 local originals specifically for the service. “That’s where we also see our strength. It’s the relevance for the domestic audiences,” states Anting.

Looking more generally at content, Anting says local productions usually don’t do well when they travel. A drama series that is successful in one of the Baltic countries is unlikely to succeed in the others unless it is an “odd one out.” However, he notes: “We need to put the effort in to do local content for the local market.”

While adaptations of big international entertainment formats do well across the Baltics, the same ones don’t necessarily work across all the three nations. For example, singing shows such as Pop Idol and The Masked Singer (aka Voice in the Mask) do very well in Latvia, whereas dancing shows, including Dancing With the Stars, are popular in Lithuania.

Also, when it comes to local adaptations of shows, they only appear in one market. Anting cites the example of mockumentary sitcom The Office, the Estonian version of which has done well in Estonia for many years and is now on the Go3 streaming service. But it doesn’t travel, because humour is different in each of the three Baltic countries.

When it comes to the challenges companies face when operating in the Baltics, Anting says that one is the size of the market. “You have to be very careful because the margin for error is much smaller than in a big country, and you need to be prepared to work around that.”

He also thinks that language is a big issue. The general English-language services “reach only a certain level,” not because of viewers’ inability to understand them but rather the comfort of wanting to be entertained in that language.

“Our strategy from the beginning was to be as local as we can and cater for domestic audiences,” says Anting, and “that is a very big challenge.” Also, because of the large groups of ethnic Russians living in the Baltics, especially Latvia but also Estonia, TV3 Group works in four languages, not three.

In Anting’s view, the level of competition in the Baltics is as high as one will find in other markets. There is also a strong need to understand the differences between the three countries, with the best example being on the sports side. “Lithuanians are crazy about basketball, but Latvians don’t care much about it, and are more into ice hockey, while the Estonians are into rally sports, like the Finnish. And if you don’t have that sensitivity for what people like and want then you take the wrong decisions on programming and acquisitions and easily fall into a trap.”

Anting is generally upbeat about the situation in the Baltics, where advertisers “still see the value of what they get out of linear TV,” which is not declining as steeply as it is in, for instance, the Nordic region. People also see the value and convenience of streaming services if they are relevant to them.

For TV3 Group, the primary focus will remain on the transformation from linear broadcasting towards streaming, while achieving the goal of one million subscribers for Go3 will allow for even more investment in production. Local production will indeed remain a priority, as will the company’s commitment to the news and infotainment space. This, says Anting, is something that “in our region we need to safeguard and protect.”