South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission said Monday it had approved a merger between Twing and Seen, two Korean video streaming platforms. The deal was proposed in July of this year.
“We have concluded that (the merger) will not restrict competition in the market for content delivery to larger platforms,” the regulator said in a statement.
CJ ENM is Tving’s controlling shareholder, while tech giant Naver and broadcaster JTBC are smaller minority owners. Seezn is currently owned by local telecommunications giant KT Corp.
The FTC believes the deal will not significantly change the streaming hierarchy in Korea. Netflix is the market leader with a market share of 38% between January and September, ahead of Wavve with 14% and Tving with 13%. Coupang Play had almost 12% and Disney+ almost 6%. Seezn had 5%.
It also said the combined company was unlikely to raise subscription prices due to competitive pressures.
And he estimated that third-party software sales are too valuable for CJ’s ENM subsidiaries to give up, making it unlikely that a combined Tving-Seezn would be able to capture all of CJ’s software products.
Tving reported an annual operating loss of 208 billion won ($159 million) last year. In 2021, Seezn’s operating profit was 2.5 billion won ($1.91 million).
The benefits of the merger are touted as saving on marketing costs and expanding the subscriber base, which includes KT’s 14 million cellular customers. TVing spent 18 billion won ($13.8 million) on marketing last year.
