The group is present at the event in Croatia on the hunt for new titles to add to its catalog, as well as showcase a varied slate of productions for the region.
Produced by Luis Cabrera, from Croatia
With the double duty of focusing both on content distribution and acquisition, Viaplay’s Suzanne Flowerday made its way to the new edition of NEM Dubrovnik, to showcase the latest additions to the group’s catalog, as well as find new content for its Viaplay Select brand and SVOD services.
And when it comes to content acquisition, there’s one leading genre that Viaplay has become an expert on. “We position ourselves as the best of the Nordics and the best of European content. So a lot of our key fans and key subscribers obviously love Nordic Noir, and that is our bread and butter,” the executive explained to ttvnews at the event in Croatia.
“But we also like to bring other European crime drama, hat has a kind of gritty Nordic flair to it,” she added. “And we work with a number of different companies to do that. We’ve got some Portuguese content, we’re looking at some Spanish content, essentially European content on the service. It’s a real mix, but for us, it’s about great storytelling. People come to us for high-end quality drama and storytelling.”
In addition to acquiring content, the executive is present in Croatia with a slate of productions to offer the international market. “We recently just launched Golden Boys in Sweden on TV4. This is a brand new mini-series, set around a true story, a real-life financial crime drama”, she explained.
Golden Boys is set in Stockholm in 1997. Financial criminal Joachim Posener, newly released from prison, dreams of building an empire – becoming powerful, respected and successful. Driven by a need to prove himself to his parents and provide for his seven-year-old son, he joins forces with his reckless, boundary-pushing cousin, Thomas Jisander. Together, they party hard, dream big, and devise a wildly illegal scheme to seize control of a major Swedish investment company – using an enigmatic British aristocrat as their front man. Calling themselves the “Golden Boys,” they pull off the largest financial crime in Swedish history.
But as a determined journalist begins to uncover the truth and the media and police close in, cracks form within the group. When the scheme collapses, Posener abandons everyone closest to him – Jisander, his parents, and his son – and flees the country. He has never returned.
“There’s a lot of dodgy dealings. And it’s basically about these three young guys who, with a sort of Wolf of Wall Street flair, think that they’re indestructible. It’s quite lavish,” she noted.
“We’re also here talking about our other programming. We actually distribute a number of HBO, SkyShowtime originals, such as The Informant, which is a Hugarian original”, he said.
Set in Budapest in 1985, it follows Geri, a wide-eyed college freshman, who arrives at university eager to begin a new chapter of independence and discovery. But his life takes a dark turn when State Security blackmails him into infiltrating a radical pro-democracy group. Tasked with spying on the charismatic rebel leader Száva and his circle of friends, Geri finds himself torn between loyalty to those he grows close to and the demands of a ruthless regime.
“We’ve also got a number of other shows from HBO, SkyShowtime, which range anywhere from Spanish to Nordic, to Czech, to Romanian. We’ve got a whole host. So that felt very particular for this market to kind of showcase local content also from this region”, she explained.
“And showing people what we do, and what we do best is sports. We have big partnerships in the Netherlands and in the Nordics with various personalities. Max Verstappen is an example. We do a lot with him as he’s our brand ambassador in the Netherlands. And we hold the rights to the F1. So we have a lot of documentaries with Max, as well as other players like Erling Haaland, who plays for Manchester City. He’s a partner of ours in the Nordics,” she explained.
In this regard, the executive explained Viaplay produces many documentaries in the world of sports, more recently a documentary called Sport vs. Money, which is a four-hour mini-series. “Super interesting for sports fans and football fans in particular”, she highlighted.
Sport vs Money tells the inside story of the collision between football and business – a story about power, ownership, and money that reaches far beyond the pitch. Across four episodes, Simon Jordan, the Premier League’s youngest-ever club owner, travels the globe to explore how decisions made by football’s top executives in the early 1990s set in motion a transformation that turned the world’s most beloved sport into a $100 billion global industry.
From London to Miami, Turin to New York, Jordan meets the people who have driven and defined this shift – including club owners, CEOs, FIFA executives, agents, and former players – to uncover how community-rooted clubs became global billion-dollar assets, how players evolved into worldwide brands, and how the future of the game is now shaped behind closed doors.
“You get interviews with the top club owners, people like Daniel Levy, top managers like Arsene Wenger. You know, it’s talking to all those guys and it’s basically seeing how it came about,” she said. “So we have a real mix of content, which is really exciting.”
