More jobs go at Foxtel
70 staff made redundant within Foxtel marketing and creative divisions.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Coronavirus, Subscription, Top Stories
70 more jobs have been culled at Foxtel as part of a company restructuring.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports the redundancies affect Foxtel and FOX Sports’ marketing and creative divisions.
They follow 200 employees made redundant earlier this month and another 140 stood down until the end of June.
“These are changes we had to make to face up to the impacts of COVID-19 on our business and a very different future for everyone involved in the media, entertainment and sporting industries,” a Foxtel spokesman said.
“The changes in marketing and creative reflect a new way of working following the merger of the FOX Sports and Foxtel teams last year that is now seeing us reduce our internal creative spend and centralise, outsource or consolidate some marketing functions.”
Foxtel is under significant pressure at the moment with increased competition from streaming services, subscriber cancellations and the loss of major sports -in addition to its current debt.
But it has offered access to additional content to keep customers as well as payment plans.
Under CEO Patrick Delany, Foxtel is also trying to renegotiate sports deals with the NRL, Cricket Australia and the AFL and to secure an extension on a multi-million content deal with WarnerMedia’s HBO.
A new entertainment offering known as Binge, to operate similarly to Kayo, is expected to launch in the next four to six weeks.
Media companies including Southern Cross and Bauer Media have also stood down staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, while Seven West Media has initiated pay cuts.
3 Responses
After the poor business nous exposed in some of the major sporting codes it’s hard to feel sympathy for these codes COVID-19 plight, but that isn’t going to help Foxtel right now.
Foxtel probably need ‘Binge’ to start up quite soon to fill the subscriber gaps left by Kayo’s customer cancellations, but just transferring content from Foxtel lists without some new exclusives included may end up a hard sell in the medium to long term, you might as well stay with Foxtel Now.
For Foxtel’s sake I hope I’m wrong.
What poor business nous has been exposed? Most sporting codes around the world have had to stop and have reduced pay, put staff on leave or layed them off as a result. In fact many business that have had their revenues unexpectedly stop have done the same. Conversely those that have benefited like Coles and Woolworths have been putting on staff.
So project Aries now has a brand name. Which looks like a preexisting non-trademarkable verb to me. And one with negative connections whose peak has passed, as streaming services shift towards 1 ep a week as streams try to reduce churn and viewers seek moderation and quality instead of just excess.