0/5

Regional clubs facing Foxtel price increase

Some clubs are cancelling their Foxtel after increases of $40,000 a year.

Regional pubs and clubs are facing a price hike from Foxtel, some by up to $40,000 a year, according to a media report and bringing them in line with city venues.

Sport on the big screen is a big drawcard in public venues, especially pay per view Main Event screenings.

The Australian Financial Review” reports licensed venue rate cards are based on four metrics: monthly bar sales, venue capacity, licence type and number of gaming machines. The combined metrics place a club in one of six categories, with monthly subscriptions ranging from $1908 to $8137 per venue.

Twin Towns Clubs & Resorts in Tweed Heads, which cancelled its subscription after a lift from $129,000 a year to $201,000 for their three venues.

Mittagong RSL Club also cancelled its subscription after its price jumped to $95,224 for 2019 compared to $54,000 last year.

Another unnamed club, which chose to keep its Foxtel subscription due to competition with other venues saw its yearly fee jump more than $40,000 for 2019.

Foxtel confirmed it had reviewed rates at pubs and clubs “to ensure consistency and transparency of pricing across the industry”.

“In the last few weeks more than 350 regional pubs and clubs customers have received confirmation that their rates for the 12 months from 1 March 2019 will be the same or less than their current rate,” a Foxtel spokeswoman said. “In a small number of cases, this has resulted in a rates increase as we provide uniformity to our pricing model across comparable venues.”

4 Responses

  1. One thing I’ve noticed is that whilst most motels used to have Foxtel now I rarely stay in one which does. They must have decided the cost wasn’t worth it……

    1. I’ve stayed in one recently that had Foxtel, but they were really stingy with the channels, and of course they were the ghastly SD variants.

      The fact that Foxtel thought it would be appropriate to nearly double the fee for some organisations ($129,000 to $201,000?!!!) is absolutely obscene. From the looks of things, hotels are effectively paying the same price as what a general consumer would pay per room. No wonder they’re not bothering to invest in it. Most people probably barely watch TV anyway, and the minimal amount of time spent watching Foxtel (as opposed to FTA) wouldn’t be worth the cost to the hotel. It would be cheaper in the long term to invest in smart TVs with access to YouTube and Netflix instead.

      1. The reason most venues are still using SD is due to the cost upgrade for HD.
        Foxtel charges $2000 per box to upgrade to an IQ2 box to get HD. When you have a venue (like a few I work for) that have 10 boxes it adds up to a lot of money. And then you have to installed HD modulators, which can be upto $1000 extra per box. Plus it all needs to be installed. And then half of their TVs aren’t MP4 compatible, it all adds up. I don’t blame some venues for dropping fox.
        The same issue just happened with the Sky channel HD Upgrade. Venues were told they were going to receive a new HD picture for SKY1. The upgrade happened over the air over night. The next day venues had to go buy 10-20 new screens… SKY didn’t offer any assistance unless you were a big venue.

Leave a Reply