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Optus Sport hits subscriber high

The return of European football drives Optus Sport subscribers to 868,000.

Optus Sport has confirmed its active subscriber base has hit a record high of 868,000 and the return of English Premier League, Women’s Super League and UEFA Champions League has increased viewer engagement by 37% from the previous year.

Clive Dickens, Optus’ VP of TV, Content and Product Development said, “Since the return of live European Football, we’ve seen record growth in subscriptions, engagement and viewership over the past few months, which can be attributed to an increase in our breadth and depth of live football and significant improvements to our platform and user experience.

“Optus Sport has broken its own viewership records for a Premier League Match week six times since the start of September 2020, with the more than 280,000 account holders streaming Everton draw with Liverpool, on the 18th October by far our largest ever Premier League match.

“What’s even more impressive, is our subscriber engagement has increased by +37% this season, which is a testament to the entire team at Optus Sport, who are not only committed to delivering on average over 240 live-streamed exclusive matches, but also must see news and analysis that keeps our passionate football fans engaged.

“With over half a million Optus Sport subscribers each week streaming on average over 2 hours of live and on-demand premium content each, we are continuing to cement our credentials as the home of must-see premium football.”

“We’ve also seen tremendous response to our new health and wellbeing platform, OS Fitness has seen more than 60,000 unique users visit the platform since it was launched in July this year.”

6 Responses

  1. I would say the new iPhone probably did more for subscriber numbers. Optus has a great iPhone plan and Optus Sport comes with it for free. A few Telstra refugees who probably ticked the box because it was free.

  2. Are the numbers audited externally or is it Optus spin?
    It may have been 70,000 people that had to re-start again and again…and again.
    I remember Floptus.

  3. Optus has a monopoly on EPL soccer. Their subscription numbers reflect the fact that fans have no choice but to subscribe to their service.
    It was great for fans when SBS was permitted to broadcast one match per week thereby breaking the then pay-TV monopoly.

    1. Great for fans when SBS was permitted to broadcast one match per week, unless you barrack for Arsenal (who play the majority of their games on Sundays or Mondays with a late kick-off). SBS only got either the early kickoff match on Saturdays or the mid-afternoon (UK time) match on Saturdays. SBS rarely showed Arsenal matches, often it is lower down the ladder teams who played these matches.

  4. I’m not sure what Optus paid for the broadcast rights but football fans should be grateful that they also run a telco business.
    The SBS would be happy to have those viewer figures though, when they had some decent football coverage.

    1. why?
      foxtel didn’t get any better…for world cup games no doubt

      Tuesday 5 September 2017 – World Cup Qualifier involving Australia – 250,000
      Wednesday 15 November 2017 – World Cup Qualifier involving Australia – 328,000

      ah yes – thats right you want free stuff (even though EPL is on pay tv everywhere else in the world)

      BT sports (in the UK – British Telecom) is also a telecommunications company – and their IPTV platform blows foxtel out of the water – and bring Sky Sports UK into the mix…..
      they stream some european soccer games – don’t hear anyone in the UK complaining….

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