Tving, Wavve streaming services may merge platforms, reports say

Logos of Tving, left, and Wavve [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Two of Korea’s biggest domestic streaming services, Tving and Wavve, may merge their two platforms, local reports said Wednesday.

Local media outlet The Korea Economic Daily reported Wednesday that CJ ENM, which owns Tving, and SK Square, which operates Wavve, will sign a deal next month to merge their streaming services into one.

CJ ENM will take the majority stake, and investment company SK Square will be the second largest shareholder, the report said.

Both companies declined to comment, only saying that all possibilities are on the table.

"We are discussing various methods to cooperate [with Wavve] in order to strengthen our competitiveness as an OTT business," a Tving spokesperson told the Korea JoongAng Daily, using the industry jargon of over-the-top (OTT) services to refer to streaming services.

The comment was echoed by Wavve, which said that the two companies are having discussions but that a concrete decision has not yet been reached.

If the negotiations go through as reported, the merged company is expected to become unrivaled as the No. 1 domestic streaming service in Korea. Tving is currently the second largest domestic streaming service with 5.1 million monthly active users (MAU), while Wavve sits at No. 4 with 4.23 million MAU.

Should the two services' users converge, the resulting service could outnumber the number of monthly users of Netflix in Korea. Netflix is the largest streaming service in the world and has 11.37 million users in Korea.

A decision is expected to be reached no later than early next week, according to local reports. In December last year, Tving merged with KT's streaming service Seezn. Currently, Tving's largest shareholder is CJ ENM with 48.85 percent, and Wavve's largest shareholder is SK Square with 40.5 percent.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]