Lena De Geer, head of sustainability at Viaplay Group, tells TVBEurope about the companys aim to become one of the worlds most truly sustainable, diverse, and inclusive entertainment providers
By Jenny Priestley
Published: April 13, 2023
Lena De Geer, head of sustainability at Viaplay Group, tells TVBEurope about the company's aim to become one of the world's most truly sustainable, diverse, and inclusive entertainment providers
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
Earlier this year, Swedish media and entertainment company Viaplay Group was recognised for its sustainability performance for the second year in a row.
The company ranked eighth in a list of 294 global media businesses by Sustainalytics, an organisation that assesses a company's exposure to industry-specific material sustainability risks, and how well the company is managing these risks.
Lena De Geer, head of sustainability at Viaplay Group tells TVBEurope how the company has achieved its goals so far, plans to go further, how technology vendors can help it meet its targets and how other streaming services can learn from their example.
Why is sustainability important to Viaplay Group? We see our commitment to sustainable development, creating long-term value for all stakeholders, and sustainability leadership in the industry as key to our future success. The long-term vision for Viaplay Group is to become one of the world's most truly sustainable, diverse, and inclusive entertainment providers.
These commitments and our ambition are important to us because they allow us to act on our values, live up to our commitment to our people and be a great company to work with. In addition, our work with sustainability is a vehicle through which we are able to have a positive impact on the world, while also helping us ensure the long-term success of our business.
We have set an extensive sustainability strategy roadmap which is integrated into its overall business strategy with 15 long-term goals across three strategic focus areas: Climate and the environment, diversity and inclusion, and well-being and ethics.
We have already made significant progress towards our long-term climate goals in our own operations Scope 1 and 2, which were recently validated by the Science-based targets initiative. The Group reduced emissions from fuel use and purchased energy (Scope 1 & 2) by 64.9 per cent, compared to 2019 levels, primarily by switching purchased electricity contracts to renewable energy. On top of this, the Group upgraded systems and processes in its facilities, beginning with retiring energy-intensive onsite servers and migrating to more efficient hyperscale cloud services. This change led onsite-server energy use to be cut by 50 per cent in 2022, and the Group now aims to cut this a further 33 per cent in 2023. However as 60 per cent of our climate impact comes from our productions, which are mainly produced by partners-we are focusing a lot on our supply chain and productions:
We want to create content without a huge carbon-footprint, and through responsible production practices (taking well-being, work environment into consideration)
We want to engage with all our production partners and support them in this journey measuring and reducing their climate impact, so they can set their own climate targets.
To make this happen, we have set up a sustainable production programme, which includes tools, training and guides to support our partners.
What measures have you introduced to make productions more sustainable? To us, sustainable production practices are ones that both uplift the people involved by ensuring a safe and healthy work environment as well as protect the planet by minimising the environmental impact of putting on a production. Last year we launched Viaplay Group's sustainable production programme. It consists of several different initiatives working in concert to make productions more sustainable, while also working to safeguard our values and principles of sustainable productions in our supply chain.
Screenings and work-environment pulse surveys: As part of our supplier due-diligence and corporate compliance efforts the Group screens all commissioned productions and identifies any in which there are elevated sustainability risks; we then deploy a system of work-environment surveys in these productions to check the pulse on the work-environment in the productions to ensure that any issues that might arise can be quickly addressed.
Lena De Geer Onsite third-party audits: To ensure that the production companies we work with abide by our supplier Code of Conduct and upload Viaplay groups principles for sustainable productions, we have also initiated a third-party onsite audit programme. Identified key productions are audited by a third-party to ensure that any issues (human rights, health & safety, climate issues etc) that might arise in a production, are addressed. Additionally, onsite audits are conducted in productions if we get any indications of deviations showing that sustainable production practices are not being respected. This is a very effective tool safeguarding responsible production practices in our value chain.
New sustainable production guide and people and planet storytelling test: In May, the Group will launch its Sustainable Production Guide. This open-source guide sets up an easy-to-use system to help productions in implementing sustainability standards and best practices, integrate measuring and reducing of GHG emissions into production processes, as well as ensure the storytelling in both scripted and non-scripted content promotes or reflects sustainability.
In terms of your technology supply chain, what are you looking for from vendors regarding sustainability and carbon neutral products? The Group's steaming currently acc
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Lena De Geer, head of sustainability at Viaplay Group, tells TVBEurope about the companys aim to become one of the worlds most truly sustainable, diverse, and inclusive entertainment providers
