Viaplay Content Distribution
As Mipcom 2025 approaches, Viaplay Select & Content Distribution is preparing to showcase its expanding portfolio of Nordic and European storytelling. Exec VP Vanda Rapti outlines the company’s key titles, strategic partnerships and vision for the global content marketplace.
What are the flagship titles you’re highlighting at Mipcom this year?
We’re incredibly excited about our main titles for Mipcom. Leading our slate is Vanguard, a five-part scripted drama that’s already proven its quality by winning two Golden Nymphs and a Kristallen TV Award. It tells the story of a visionary tycoon, the controversial Swedish media mogul Jan Stenbeck, whose turbulent rise disrupted telecom and television, fundamentally reshaping the media landscape.
We’re also showcasing A Life’s Worth, a six-part war drama that was nominated for Series Mania this year. This is a particularly powerful piece that follows young Swedish UN soldiers in Bosnia, where what begins as a peacekeeping mission turns violent, exposing war’s moral dilemmas and the bonds formed under extreme circumstances.
Another key title is Sport vs Money with Simon Jordan, a four-part docuseries examining football’s billion-dollar transformation. What makes this particularly timely is that it’s hosted by former club owner Simon Jordan and features exclusive insights from industry heavyweights like Arsène Wenger, Andrea Agnelli and Lord Sugar. With the World Cup on the horizon, it addresses high-interest topics around power, ethics and the future of the game.
We’re also proud to present Raoul Wallenberg: Missing Inaction, a feature-length documentary narrated by Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Lee Curtis and Brian Cox. This WWII documentary retraces Wallenberg’s heroism, his mysterious disappearance and the decades-long search for truth.
Beyond these flagship titles, what else are you bringing to Cannes?
Our broader scripted line-up combines emotional depth with regional distinctiveness. We have Scenes After a Marriage, which offers an intimate, real-time relationship drama, and In the Name of Love, which weaves together a porn empire, family secrets and a baptism gone wrong across three decades of bittersweet family saga storytelling. There’s also Stayer, which presents a moving story of grief, music and second chances, and Adults, a sharp and relatable modern dramedy exploring love, ambition and self-discovery.
How do partnerships factor into your Mipcom strategy?
In strengthening our slate, partnerships with major commissioners are essential to further strengthening our position on best of Nordic storytelling internationally. For example, we have a partnership with SkyShowtime, which gives us international distribution rights access to acclaimed Nordic and European titles such as Beartown, Beforeigners, Kamikaze and The Informant.
We also have strong collaborations with leading producers, public broadcasters and key commercial players, enabling us to bring premium, locally rooted stories with international resonance to market. As a result, we’ve recently acquired strong titles for our slate commissioned by SVT, TV4, HBO and Warner Bros Discovery.
What role do formats play in your distribution strategy?
Until recently, format distribution wasn’t a major focus for us, but we’ve seen impressive demand for scripted remakes of some of our titles and have already closed several deals. Looking ahead, our strategy includes actively pursuing scripted forward sales with producers and key commissioners.
Titles such as Call Me Dad, The Beach Hotel, Chaos, Who Shot Otto Mueller, Jana – Marked for Life, Murderesses, Meaning of Life, Milk, The Ambassador, Secrets, and End of Summer are attracting significant attention from buyers seeking strong storytelling and proven concepts for local adaptation.
Nordic series are particularly well-suited for remakes, even in markets that favour longer-episode storytelling. Their plots and characters are layered and detailed, offering enough substance to expand naturally. They’re also ideal for English-language adaptations: the scripts deliver exceptional quality, while their relatively limited initial exposure preserves the potential for global hit success.
How does Viaplay Select complement your distribution efforts?
Our international SVoD and Viaplay Select offerings work hand-in-hand with the content licensing, maximising the value our content can deliver across different markets, and with different clients and their needs.
How do you see Viaplay’s role evolving in the current market landscape?
We’re operating in a fascinating period where global streamers are changing their strategies and regional players are gaining strength. Our ambition is clear: to be the leading home for Nordic and European storytelling internationally, in a manner that serves both content buyers, local streamers and service aggregators.
Looking ahead, what does success look like for Viaplay in the coming years?
Success means continued growth in our international SVOD channels subscriber base and in our partnerships with aggregators. It also means expanding Viaplay Select through new collaborations with streamers and strengthening our position as the go-to destination for premium Nordic and European content among content buyers.
We’re championing a distinctive storytelling tradition that combines local authenticity with universal appeal and maximising the potential of our content –which also makes us the go-to international home for producers and commissioners looking to unlock global reach for their stories.
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Vanda Rapti, exec VP of Viaplay Select & Content Distribution at Viaplay Group, discusses how the Nordic company is adapting to the changing industry landscape, how its VoD business is shifting and the new titles it is taking to Mipcom.
Considering the economic pressures affecting the media industry globally, how are you adapting your content licensing strategy to navigate these challenges and continue delivering value to your audiences?
We are happy to see so many partners around the world promoting Viaplay Select, a service within a service, as a flagship part of their offering and seeing the value in using our support smartly for our growth. We are also pleased to see our content capturing additional eyeballs and growing fast on Amazon Prime, where we launched in the US in April and in the UK in July. Following the success of our channels, we are going to continue to grow our SVoD distribution on Amazon and launch in more markets.
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Vanda Rapti, exec VP at Scandinavia’s Viaplay Group for Viaplay Select and Content Distribution, gives her take on the changing market and the impact of the economic situation, and also highlights the company’s slate for the London TV Screenings this week.
Given the changing industry landscape, how is Viaplay Content Distribution’s content strategy evolving?
As a content distributor, we are in the unique position of being part of a large but not global streaming group, which has the upside of ‘best of both worlds.’ This means we have the benefits of the streamer on curation expertise, multi-territory licensing, commissioning leverage and understanding streamers and platforms’ needs, coupled with a high degree of flexibility and available rights to offer to partners around the world.
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Filippa Wallestam of international streamer Viaplay outlines her commissioning strategy and talks through highlights of the slate of titles being showcased by new division Viaplay Content Distribution via C21’s Digital Screenings this week.
If Filippa Wallestam ever tires of her job as exec VP and chief content officer at Viaplay Group-owned streaming platform Viaplay, she would probably make an excellent air traffic controller.
With dozens of original scripted and non-scripted ideas landing on her desk every month, her job isn’t just about identifying and greenlighting great shows – but also deciding whether they should be produced for local or multinational markets.
Now that Viaplay is ramping up its activities in the US, the UK and global distribution, there is also a decision to be made about language. Should a show be made in a Nordic language, English or a mixture of the two? Not to be forgotten, either, is that the streamer is also available in the Baltics, Netherlands and Poland – each of which is aimed to be serviced with a mix of Nordic-originated shows and local content. Viaplay in Estonia, for example, has just launched its first local-language original, a whodunnit-style crime series called Who Shot Otto Mueller?.
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