Tving–Wavve Merger: What Korea’s 18-Month OTT Price Freeze Really Means

When South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) conditionally approved the merger between domestic streaming platforms Tving and Wavve, it wrapped the decision in consumer-first language. The deal, it said, could proceed only under one key constraint: all subscription prices — old and new — must remain frozen through December 31, 2026.

At first glance, the move appears protective, even progressive. By capping rates for 18 months, the regulator sought to shield consumers from post-merger price shocks in a market now reduced from four major players to three. The merged entity, combining the resources of CJ ENM and SK Square, would hold roughly 34% of the Korean OTT market — nearly matching Netflix’s 33.9% and vaulting ahead of Coupang Play.

But look beneath the surface, and a different picture emerges.

The price freeze, while headline-grabbing, applies narrowly: it regulates sticker prices, not pricing architecture. Tving and Wavve already operate complex, stratified subscription models. A basic plan offers 720p resolution and single-device access for ₩9,500; a premium plan unlocks 4K, four screens, and access to exclusive content like live sports — for nearly double the cost. These tiers, untouched by the KFTC’s mandate, divide users not only by resolution, but by what they can watch at all.

Even more critically, the freeze excludes add-ons, advertising tiers, sports bundles, and account-sharing rules — all of which are fast becoming key levers in the OTT monetization playbook. Industry observers warn that once the regulatory lid lifts in late 2026, platforms may not raise prices directly. Instead, they may simply redesign the walls around premium content — charging more for access in ways that escape the freeze’s original intent.

And then there’s the content crisis. Korean OTT platforms, though flush with capital, are facing a drought of standout titles. With production costs ballooning and creative bottlenecks slowing output, viewers increasingly complain of "nothing to watch" — even as they pay more for the privilege.

What was framed as an antitrust safeguard may, in practice, be a pause button on deeper systemic problems. The streaming revolution that once promised consumer freedom is tilting toward complexity, segmentation, and fatigue.

This series investigates what the 18-month freeze does — and doesn’t — fix. It follows the money, dissects the tiers, examines the content cliff, and maps out the policy vacuum around one of Korea’s most consequential media mergers. In doing so, it asks a simple question: when the freeze ends, what exactly will we be paying for?

Beneath the Freeze — A Tiered System Still Rising

While the KFTC’s ruling appears to hold streaming prices in check, the reality for Korean consumers is more nuanced. The freeze applies to nominal monthly rates — not to the increasingly complex and segmented way those rates are structured. In practice, Korea’s OTT users are already navigating one of the most tiered media ecosystems in the world, and the price ceiling does nothing to simplify it.

Both Tving and Wavve operate multi-level pricing schemes that resemble an airline’s cabin structure more than a traditional subscription model. A typical entry-level plan offers single-screen, standard-definition streaming at ₩7,900 to ₩9,500. To unlock higher-resolution content, more devices, or ad-free viewing, subscribers must climb into higher-priced tiers. But the differences are no longer just technical — they’re content-based.

Live TV, KBO baseball games, and even some newly released dramas are often restricted to premium plans or gated behind bundled add-ons. In Tving’s case, sports and real-time terrestrial broadcasting are reserved for the ₩17,000 premium plan. For Wavve, similar access begins at ₩13,900, a full 76% above its entry-level tier.

And the platforms are just getting started.

While the KFTC’s ruling appears to hold streaming prices in check, the reality for Korean consumers is more nuanced. The freeze applies to nominal monthly rates — not to the increasingly complex and segmented way those rates are structured. In practice, Korea’s OTT users are already navigating one of the most tiered media ecosystems in the world, and the price ceiling does nothing to simplify it.

Both Tving and Wavve operate multi-level pricing schemes that resemble an airline’s cabin structure more than a traditional subscription model. A typical entry-level plan offers single-screen, standard-definition streaming at ₩7,900 to ₩9,500. To unlock higher-resolution content, more devices, or ad-free viewing, subscribers must climb into higher-priced tiers. But the differences are no longer just technical — they’re content-based.

Live TV, KBO baseball games, and even some newly released dramas are often restricted to premium plans or gated behind bundled add-ons. In Tving’s case, sports and real-time terrestrial broadcasting are reserved for the ₩17,000 premium plan. For Wavve, similar access begins at ₩13,900, a full 76% above its entry-level tier.

And the platforms are just getting started.

Because the KFTC’s freeze does not apply to new service tiers or optional features, nothing prevents the merged entity from rolling out ultra-premium plans after the cap lifts — think Dolby Atmos, VR integration, or first-access content. Likewise, add-on pricing for sports or real-time news could rise independently of subscription fees. There is also no restriction on account-sharing policies, meaning the merged platform could begin charging for “extra members,” as Netflix has already done.

As a result, the regulatory freeze — heralded as a consumer safeguard — functions more like a temporary cap on optics. It leaves untouched the underlying engine of price differentiation, which is already segmenting users by both income and experience.

The deeper problem isn’t only cost — it’s clarity. Surveys conducted in early 2025 show that nearly 60% of users cannot confidently name their own plan’s features, and over half report confusion about whether live or premium content is included. That confusion isn’t accidental. As OTT platforms chase higher ARPU (average revenue per user), layered pricing — and layered limitations — become strategic tools, not collateral damage.

Crucially, the timing of this strategy matters. December 31, 2026 — the date the price freeze expires — is also the final day of CJ ENM’s mobile-exclusive rights to KBO baseball games. That exclusive content, which has helped drive subscriptions to Tving’s higher tiers, may be renegotiated, resold, or converted into a standalone add-on. In other words: just as one regulatory lid lifts, a new paywall may rise in its place.

What this suggests is that the price freeze is not a lasting solution — it is a pause in an ongoing escalation. Unless pricing structure itself becomes a regulatory focus, the post-freeze future of Korean OTT may not be cheaper. It may simply be more strategically expensive.

The Content Deficit — More Money, Fewer Must-Sees

While the conversation around Korea’s OTT platforms often focuses on pricing models, an equally urgent issue lies in what users are actually paying for. Despite record-high production budgets, Korea’s homegrown streaming platforms are facing a growing crisis: a shortage of distinctive, high-impact content.

This isn’t for lack of investment. CJ ENM, SK, and other stakeholders have funneled billions of won into high-end dramas, international co-productions, and expanded studios. The average production cost for a prestige series has ballooned in the past decade: from around ₩900 million per episode for Goblin in 2016 to estimates exceeding ₩7 billion for Squid Game Season 2 in 2025. Yet the “hit rate” — the number of culturally resonant or virally successful titles — has failed to keep pace.

This pressure has created a lopsided content economy. While a handful of flagship titles receive lavish marketing and high-end production resources, mid-tier shows struggle to get commissioned at all. Smaller production houses — once the backbone of Korea’s genre innovation — are increasingly pushed to the sidelines or forced to co-finance at their own risk.

For consumers, this manifests as catalogue bloat without freshness. While headline numbers suggest each platform offers thousands of titles, many are overlapping — syndicated from the same legacy broadcasters or recycled from older licensing agreements. Internal estimates show that more than 40% of content on Korean OTTs is available on two or more platforms, weakening the rationale for multi-subscription households.

The result is a viewing experience marked by scroll fatigue: endless tiles, few surprises. According to a 2025 consumer survey by the Korea Creative Content Agency, 62% of respondents said they often spend more than 10 minutes browsing before choosing something — and 28% said they “frequently give up and exit the app without watching.”

This malaise may worsen after 2026. Many of the rights that make platforms sticky — including the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) mobile rights and live broadcast simulcasts — are set to expire at the same time the price freeze lifts. If these rights are lost to competitors or fragmented across new bundles, the merged Tving-Wavve platform could find itself with scale but no anchor — large in market share but light in must-see content.

In other words, even before new paywalls are built, a subtler erosion may already be underway — the dilution of value through repetition, redundancy, and creative risk aversion.

Monetization by Design — Add-ons, Ads, and Access Control

If the 18-month price freeze seems like a protective measure for consumers, it’s only because the more subtle mechanics of monetization haven’t yet been regulated. Korean OTT platforms aren’t simply raising prices — they’re redesigning how revenue is extracted. And it’s happening without triggering alarms.

The new logic is simple: keep the base price visible and fixed, but introduce a suite of modular upsells — from 4K video to live sports, from ad-free viewing to device upgrades. This strategy, increasingly adopted across the global streaming industry, is now taking firmer root in Korea under the radar of antitrust caps.

Add-ons have become the stealth weapon of Korean streamers. Want to watch KBO baseball? That may soon be a separate fee. Prefer to skip ads during prime-time dramas? Prepare to pay extra. These features, once bundled into “premium” tiers, are being unbundled into individual micro-transactions — often without clear labelling.

None of these fall under the KFTC’s price freeze. In fact, nothing prevents the platforms from increasing prices for add-ons while base subscriptions remain static.

Both Tving and Wavve have rolled out lower-priced, ad-supported tiers. At face value, these plans appear consumer-friendly: ₩5,500/month instead of ₩9,500. But users quickly learn that ads aren’t just inserted — they’re often non-skippable, algorithmically targeted, and served at higher volume than on Western platforms.

In addition, these ad plans often restrict access to certain content types — sports, simulcasts, or premieres — forcing users to upgrade if they want a full experience.

This raises key concerns around transparency. Korean consumer law, unlike its European or North American counterparts, does not yet require OTT platforms to disclose how user data is monetized through ads, or to distinguish between “sponsored content” and standard programming.

In other words, the cost may be lower — but the real currency is user attention, privacy, and degraded UX.

A third, and perhaps most contested, frontier is account control. Following Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing, Korean OTTs have begun to implement their own rules:

These measures are often described as “anti-abuse” tools. But functionally, they are revenue optimization mechanisms, aiming to convert shared households into multiple paying accounts — even if the viewing habits remain the same.

What ties these practices together is that they all generate more revenue per user without formally raising the base price. That makes them hard to regulate — and easy to justify.

But from a user perspective, the effect is clear: what was once included now costs extra, and the full streaming experience is increasingly gated behind layers of hidden tolls.

Without updated legal frameworks that address content-based discrimination, bundling disclosure, and opt-in consent for targeted ads, the post-freeze OTT environment may not be defined by open access or competition — but by fragmented features, opaque pricing, and slow monetization creep.

Regulatory Blind Spots — Freezing Prices, Not the Rules

When Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) approved the merger between streaming platforms Tving and Wavve, the move was presented as a delicate balance between fostering market innovation and safeguarding consumer rights. The centerpiece of this balancing act was an 18-month price freeze — a regulatory safeguard intended to shield users from immediate subscription hikes.

However, as the post-merger environment begins to take shape, it is becoming clear that the freeze may have halted price increases in name only. What it has not prevented is price engineering — the strategic redesign of tier structures, add-ons, and access conditions that allow platforms to extract more revenue without technically breaching the cap. In essence, the cost of full access can rise significantly while the regulated base price remains unchanged.

Unlike the European Union, where regulators are moving toward content fairness rules that guarantee core access across all paid tiers, South Korea offers no such protection. This allows platforms like Tving and Wavve to lock culturally significant content — including live sports, broadcast simulcasts, and new dramas — behind higher-tier paywalls. As a result, access to popular or timely programming increasingly depends on one’s income level rather than their viewing preferences.

Compounding the problem is the opaque nature of how OTT services are sold and billed. Many streaming plans are embedded within telecom contracts, linked to payment apps, or bundled with loyalty programs. In such cases, users rarely understand the actual cost they’re paying per month. Discounts often convert into full-price auto-renewals with minimal or no notice, and the platforms themselves are not legally required to present a clear breakdown of pricing, total monthly spend, or comparable alternatives.

This lack of transparency not only creates confusion but also hides the true rate of inflation in streaming expenses — an issue that regulators have yet to meaningfully address. When the freeze lifts in December 2026, platforms will regain full pricing freedom, but there are still no rules requiring advance notice of rate hikes, cancellation grace periods, or clear disclosure of content shifting between tiers.

Perhaps most critically, Korea also lacks a cross-sector media competition framework that could address the structural concentration of power now forming. With CJ ENM (Tving) and SK Group (Wavve) holding sway over both content creation and distribution, the newly merged entity is poised to function as a vertically integrated gatekeeper. Such dominance could enable preferential bundling, exclusionary licensing, or data-driven manipulation of user access — all without triggering regulatory scrutiny.

The current oversight regime was crafted in an era when streaming was straightforward: flat monthly fees, limited tiering, and uniform access. Today’s market, by contrast, is shaped by complex bundles, behavioral segmentation, targeted monetization, and algorithmic control. Yet the regulatory architecture has not evolved in tandem. Without structural reform, Korea risks allowing its OTT industry to outpace the laws designed to govern it — leaving consumers exposed to rising costs, narrowing access, and increasingly unequal digital experiences.

Monopoly or Model? The Stakes of Korea’s OTT Consolidation

What follows will not be dictated by policy alone but by the interlocking actions of platforms, regulators, creators, and consumers — each shaping the future contours of a rapidly evolving media ecosystem.

If platforms choose to pursue complexity over clarity, layering on new premium tiers and content-based access barriers, the market may enter a phase of aggressive monetization. In such a scenario, full-feature access could become an expensive luxury, deepening digital inequality and fueling a resurgence of churn, fatigue, and even piracy. Scale, in this view, becomes a tool for revenue extraction rather than value creation.

Yet there is another possible path — one defined by a strategic recalibration toward trust. If regulators strengthen protections around content parity, price transparency, and cancellation rights, and if platforms adopt modular pricing structures that prioritize user autonomy and fairness, Korea could offer a model of sustainable, consumer-friendly streaming in the platform age. Such a shift would likely demand short-term margin sacrifices but could build long-term resilience grounded in audience loyalty.

There is also the possibility that Korean platforms pivot outward, focusing increasingly on global markets to subsidize domestic operations. While such an export-led strategy could generate capital and elevate national soft power, it may also reduce the local user to an afterthought — served later, or with less — and shift creative control away from Korean voices to global algorithms and co-production agendas.

In each of these futures, the defining question remains: who benefits from scale? Is it the viewer, empowered with broader access to stories and fairer prices — or the platform, free to charge more, show less, and answer only to its shareholders?

The Tving–Wavve merger has not resolved this question; it has merely deferred it. The freeze was a pause, not a solution. The decisions made before it lifts — about how content is distributed, how prices are disclosed, and how fairness is defined — will determine whether Korea’s streaming sector becomes a global benchmark for innovation with integrity, or yet another cautionary tale in the age of digital consolidation.