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Report: 11m Netflix subscribers, 2.6m for Stan.

Stan and Amazon Prime have enjoyed big lifts year on year amongst Aussies.

Nearly 14 million Australians now have access to some form of Pay TV / Subscription TV, up 11.8% on a year ago, according to Roy Morgan Research.

Over 11.2 million Australians have a Netflix subscription, up by 25.2% on a year ago.

Stan is the leading Australian-owned SVOD with over 2.6 million Australians -up an impressive 45.2% on a year ago.

YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red), now has over 1.2 million users, up 31.9% on a year ago and Fetch now has nearly 760,000 users, up by 9% on a year ago.

The largest increase was for Amazon Prime Video which more than doubled its user base over the last year by 116.7% to over 570,000.

Kayo Sports already reaches over 150,000 Australians.

Australian household users of Pay TV/Subscription TV services
3 months to February 2019 cf. 3 months to February 2018

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source, December 2017 – February 2018, n=11,750 Australians aged 14+ and December – February 2019, n=12,599 Australians aged 14+.

Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan, says: “Pay TV/Subscription TV services are an increasingly competitive marketplace in Australia. Going forward the battleground will be content and cost. To charge for a service there needs to be unique valued content e.g. live sport. Just this week we have learned that Australia’s leading football code the AFL has been approached by well-known global streaming giants about acquiring the rights for the AFL when the next rights deal begins in 2023.

“Foxtel has recently launched its own live-sport streaming service Kayo Sports which now reaches over 150,000 Australians only a few months after being launched. The AFL & NRL seasons which are now beginning will provide a significant boost to Kayo Sports’ subscriber numbers.

“Before the advent of Streaming Video on Demand services Foxtel enjoyed the benefit of inertia – but Australians are a mobile lot and Roy Morgan data shows around 1-in-6 Australians move house every year – and when we move house we make decisions about landlines, energy suppliers and Foxtel subscriptions.

“Analysis of Roy Morgan’s ‘Technology Adoption Segmentation’ shows that Foxtel had moved into the mainstream in its heyday. However, contemporary analysis shows that newer entrants to the market that were initially being adopted by ‘Early Adopters’ and ‘Digital Life’ are now becoming mainstream themselves.

“In its early days Foxtel was also being driven by families with children – with extra content focused on kids programs and educational programs etc. Now young people have so many more options they aren’t one of the factors pushing their parents to have Foxtel.

“One factor that remains in Foxtel’s favour is its almost ubiquitious use in pubs, clubs, hotels and other outlets around Australia for watching sport. These Foxtel subscriptions which may number in the hundreds of thousands are not captured in the Roy Morgan consumer data which concentrates on households. Many Australians who watch sport on Foxtel in pubs and clubs around Australia are themselves not subscribers to Foxtel although they do consume Foxtel outside the family home.”

14 Responses

  1. Free trials are great…except when the service doesn’t deliver. I tried Netflix for free… stopped… then returned. I tried YouTube Premium for free… stopped… but would consider returning. I tried Stan for free…. and I didn’t even make it to the end of the 30 days. Yes, content was fantastic, but the software was so glitchy for me it made it unwatchable. I’d consider returning to see if things had improved, but it would likely end up being at the expense of one of the other providers….

  2. It used to be that all programming was available to all on the FTA channels. Then along came Pay TV (Galaxy/Optus TV/Foxtel), and people complained about not being able to watch all the programs they wanted to without paying, particularly sport when Foxtel started targeting sport such as AFL and F1 in recent years.

    Now, there are so many streaming options, each with their own signature programs, that the market is now just too fragmented for me to worry about the new kids on the block. How much would you have to pay per month to get access to all of these TV services? It’s simply ludicrous.

    The only one I might be interested in is Netflix – if it comes to Foxtel, which the PayTV news section on tvtonight reported as a possibility back on 17 Feb.

    1. @condex: you are remembering the past through rose coloured glasses there. It really did not used to be that all programming as available to all on FTA at all.

      I remember delayed sports coverage, episodes shown out of order or not shown at all half way through a season, programming changes, having to set a VCR for the right time on the right channel (vs the internet where it’s on demand when you want), and various other issues.

      It is possible to go overseas on the internet, completely legally I might add, and get most of the content you find on foxtel for free or in the case of sport at a much cheaper rate (especially if you are only interested in one sport). Once you increase that to the 2-3 sports most people are interested in, it’s cheaper to get foxtel.

      Of course there are other options for free we aren’t allowed to talk about here, but going down that route, especially…

      1. Ah the old days were if the Cricket was played in your State you’d only get the morning session and first part of the one dayers. While over on Seven you’d get an AFL Game of the round (plus other games highlights), so if your team was in that recorded Game you’d try and avoid the scores until it was on (and sometimes that would be a condensed version of the match).

        Then there was a time when your local Teams weren’t on FTA live in your state as they thought it would cause low attendance at games and you’d only get interstate ones. That was around the time when people would try and get an illegal satellite box so they could view the channels around the country like Seven Central/Prime, Impaja and etc., so they could watch say the Games in Melbourne live (rather than Freo vs West Coast or whatever).

        It’s actually a thing people miss when they bring up how Hey Hey It’s…

    1. I’m not. 1) for people who watch a lot of youtube, ad free youtube is a no brainer; and 2) it also comes with unlimited music thrown in on 2 services (google play music and youtube music); and 3) Neilson stats are that 14.6 million aussies watch an average of 21 hours of youtube per week.

      I would watch at least 2 hours a day of youtube, there is a lot of great content you can just put on and background play while you work for example <= there's another benefit – listen to the audio in youtube with screen off

  3. Yes, clubs, pubs, hotels and other outlets are good earners as they pay higher commercial rates, so franchise sports rights will likely be the primary reason Foxtel will manage to keep itself in business in the future especially as competing SVOD choices will multiply as each year passes. Stan cant afford to be idle either, after receiving a subscriber sugar hit from its Disney content what then, Stan needs to acquire its own GoT attractions a lot more regularly than they are now if it wants to keep increasing its subscriber numbers.

    1. Not if they lose their rights. Global streaming players have reportedly approached the AFL already about getting the rights in 2023.

      For pubs, clubs, addicted gamblers, sports journalists and others who can’t have it on a few seconds of delay, they’ll use satellite for the rest of us it will be internet streaming direct to your TV.

  4. Prime is the best value for money. Free amazon delivery which I have more than got my money back on plus a selection of now free movies and tv. It’s worth it just for between 2 ferns.

    I’m guessing 10 all access subscriber numbers are just a rounding errror.

    1. Yep I did the yearly fee on that at $54, so yeah $4:50 a month, is less than hiring a Movie on iTunes/Fetch/Google Play, plus as you say the other side benefits come into play, including also getting 1,000 e-books to read and Twitch TV (some shows are free to Prime Subscribers).

      So even if you only watch a couple of shows a week or one movie a month you still come out ahead and yeah Between Two Ferns is hilarious. Then you have The Man In The High Castle, American Gods, Home Coming, The Expanse, Jack Ryan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Romanoffs and heaps more, plus to top it off they have all the seasons of my fave show ever Psych so I dip in and out of that.

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