Kayo growing subscriber base
Sports streaming service has enjoyed a big rise in numbers this year.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Streaming
Kayo recently released subscriber numbers of 382,000 of which 331,000 were paying, with 25 million hours of content viewed in the three months to June 2019.
That’s up on 115,000 subscribers in February, of which 100,000 were paying.
Julian Ogrin, CEO of Kayo Sports said: “Aussie sports fans are loving the Kayo service. All their live sport, mixed with the biggest line-up of on demand content and features that make watching sport simply better, is driving huge engagement.
“To have streamed over 25 million hours of content in just three months with customers watching over 8 hours a week and cricket matches reaching 220,000 users is massive.
“For the India v Australia clash to deliver over 21 million minutes of streaming shows the potential of Kayo to reach a massive audience for a long period of time. This would be the most streamed sporting event in Australia this year.
“This is just the start. The FIBA Basketball World Cup is now in action and the Rugby World Cup is just around the corner. We also have an exciting summer of cricket with teams touring from Pakistan, New Zealand and Sri Lanka and the Women’s T20 World Cup. We can’t wait to serve up more of the Kayo experience with these big sporting events.
“The team has built a fantastic product and platform that can deliver an average of 400 live streamed, high-definition events across any weekend. And as more and more Aussies stream content, we will continue to optimise the service to ensure we are always delivering the highest streaming quality possible.”
The News Corp-owned service, which launched last November, is also working towards combining user viewing numbers with Foxtel’s OzTAM viewer data to show the combined reach of content for advertisers.
“For example, the Richmond v West Coast AFL match on 18 August reached an audience of 628,000 across FOX Sports, Foxtel Now and Foxtel GO, making it the third most watched Sunday game on Foxtel this season.# When you add Kayo’s 130,000 unique users, the Foxtel Group is reaching a very large and diverse audience,” said Ogrin.
Kayo June Quarter Viewer Highlights
Time spent on Kayo reached approximately 8.5 hours of weekly user viewing in June driven by the Cricket World Cup with the average customer watching 6 of the 50 different sports available on Kayo each week.
The recent Cricket World Cup delivered Kayo its biggest audiences since launch with nearly 8 million hours of cricket content streamed across the six-week competition.
An average of 175,000 users watched Australia’s matches, with 187,000 users watching India’s matches.
The most watched game was the New Zealand v England final with 220,000 users, followed by the Australia v England match on 25 June with 219,000 users.
In addition, the India v Australia match on 9 June was the most streamed sporting event on Kayo with over 21 million minutes of viewing and watched by 214,000 users.
AFL fans are watching an average of 3.5 hours each week, with some regular season games reaching over 100,000 users including the West Coast v Richmond clash on 18 August watched by 130,000 users.
NRL fans were also watching an average of 3.5 hours each week, with some regular season games reaching nearly 70,000 users.
Rugby is already drawing large audiences ahead of this month’s Rugby World Cup with over 80,000 users watching the first Australia v New Zealand Bledisloe Cup Game on 10 August.
The NBA Finals drove big numbers on Kayo, highlighted by Raptors v Warriors Game 6 reaching 113,000 users.
In Tennis, Aussies got behind Ash Barty’s maiden Grand Slam victory with 64,000 users watching her take out Roland-Garros.
Formula 1 has also delivered impressive results, highlighted by over 75,000 users watching the German Grand Prix.
9 Responses
Here in Perth last night Ch 7 broadcasted the 1st Qualifying Final on 73 (in SD) whilst on Foxtel it was shown in HD with no ads during play. Why could they not put the footy on 70 so those who have forked out big bucks for large tellys at least enjoy the experience? Better Home and Gardens is wasted on a HD channel when there is a sports program on at the same time. I’ve seen them do this in the past.
” the Richmond v West Coast AFL match on 18 August reached an audience of 628,000 across FOX Sports, Foxtel Now and Foxtel GO”
Imagine how many more footy fans would have tuned in if the game was on free-to-air. Of course Foxtel can boast a lot of viewers – they have a monopoly!
For all of Foxtel’s knockers, at least they play all the games live and in HD and 4K in some instances. When 7 had the ‘monopoly’ on Friday nights, they would show the game in Perth with a 2 to 3 hour time delay. They also extended the actual time of the game by filling it with more adds. It was infuriating, so now I watch just one game on 7 each year and that’s the grand final, which has been shown most years in glorious SD!
7 have little respect of AFL fans and don’t deserve to show any of the games as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure 7’s coverage has made many a footy fan sign up with Foxtel or Kayo and once you have it, you won’t go back to 7’s coverage again.
Wish they were allowed to do their own commentary on the Seven Games they show as if the game has Brian Taylor and James Brayshaw both on commentary I’m out of there. Used to sync it up with the radio as I have a pause button on my digital radio and was able to get it right (fastforward, rewind etc), now for some reason I never can so it’s radio only on games I care about.
Seven’s coverage is so good, Foxtel use Seven’s feed instead of having their own commentators. With NRL, Foxtel have their own commentators for each match.
Shiraz
the 2-3 hour delay was imposed on Chan 7 by the AFL. The AFL no longer impose that.
I’m happy for Foxtel to show all games in HD or any other format and for them to charge what they like. But allow Chan 7 to show ALL games (without imposing an excessively huge licence fee) and then let the humble viewer make the choice to pay or watch for free. At the moment, there is no choice.
Agree with JRS, Seven don’t want to show all the games, they are only interested in prime time, Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon leading into the news, plus the annoying Thursday night games they’ve thrown into the deal. No big viewership for them to worry with showing 2-3 Saturday/Sunday afternoon games.
And as soon as the AFL allowed 7 to show the games live, did 7 show them live, or keep them on delay so they could continue to squeeze in more adds???
AFL is on the anti siphoning list. The FTA networks could have all of the games if they wanted them. Seven made the choice to only broadcast the number of matches they do.