‘7Plus will leapfrog Nine, ABC to become the dominant free-to-air streaming platform next year’: Seven’s bold plan for 2025
The name says it all, really: 7plus First. As a slogan, it’s meant to evoke the idea that Seven’s streaming platform is the place to catch premieres of overseas and local programming.
But as a business strategy, it sees Seven placing its streamer squarely in competition with the international giants.
RELATED: Seven streamlines its ad offering as it takes on the global streamers
Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and Apple were all mentioned by executives at Seven’s Upfront in Sydney on Wednesday afternoon, both as the example they were following – a mix of tentpole premieres and evergreen TV series – and the field in which they choose to compete. Seven rejects the BVOD tag these days – they are a premium content streamer like Netflix, not simply a place to catch up on stream-to-air programming.
Unlike the overseas streaming service though, Seven’s audiences come to the platform expecting ads.
Angus Ross, Seven’s group managing director of television, was blunt when speaking to Mumbrella during the week. “It’s really mimicking the SVOD strategy, isn’t it?” he confesses.
Gereurd Roberts, group managing director of Seven Digital elaborates: “Our high-value audience growth strategy is built around this concept of bonfires and fireworks.
Jeff Howard, Katie Finney, Angus Ross, and Gereurd Roberts
“The bonfires is the sort of day-to-day, daily consumption that we see, across everything from live TV, to FAST [free ad-supported channels], to premium library, and video-on-demand.”
The fireworks are the first-run exclusives that give big viewership spikes. Last year, 7plus had two of these shows – this year they plan to launch a new overseas series each month, with the exclusive first-run on 7plus for Suits: LA, Doc, The Hunting Party, Grosse Pointe Garden Society, St Denis Medical, Ludwig, and The Americas.
“We saw a real opportunity to drive new audiences into 7plus with this ‘7plus First’ philosophy where we’re aiming to drop at least one new program every month across the year, and really start to showcase 7plus being in that new premium video space,” Roberts explains of the strategy.
7plus viewership is up 27% year-on-year, a lot of which was driven by new audiences.
“It’s not cannibalising broadcast at all,” Roberts notes of the growth in streaming. “It’s complementary to broadcast. So the audience is additive. And as [Ross] said, it’s actually an SVOD strategy – if you think about Netflix – all of the biggest shows every year, the library shows, so House, Friends, the Gilmore Girls, that’s actually the baseline, then they get big spikes off noisy exclusives like Squid Games or Baby Reindeer or The Gentleman.
“What we’re trying to do is build a competitor to the ad funded SVODs through an SVOD strategy. And we’re seeing that work.”
The 7plus audience is swiftly changing. 45% of users come to the platform and consume only ‘premium library’ or ‘first-run exclusives’.
“It’s remarkable how many people come in on a daily basis to consume content that is not on broadcast,” Ross notes.
Roberts calculates more than 300,000 Australians daily are watching programming that isn’t broadcast on the free-to-air linear channels.
“So, their relationship with 7 Plus is exactly the same as their relationship with a Netflix or a Prime Video or a Disney Plus; they’re treating it exactly the same way,” Roberts reasons.
“The benefit we have is in daily scale, so daily active usage, and also in the fact that all of our users actually see ads, and they’re used to doing so.”
Ross adds: “Then layer over the sports streaming rights which we haven’t had, on top of that – which clearly drives streaming.”
This is the final piece of the puzzle. Australians will, for the first time ever, be able to stream live cricket and AFL, starting this month, which Seven believes will bring another swathe of Australians to the streamer.
“We had one hand tied behind our back in terms of live streaming, which is primarily driven by sport,” Ross says.
“It’s a really radical game changer for us next year, having the two: the biggest summer sport and the biggest winter sport, in AFL and cricket.”
Roberts says, alongside the audience uplift, “we’re also big believers in Australians’ right to have access to free sport. Australia’s biggest summer and winter sports have never been available to stream for free for Australians, ever. That’s quite incredible. You can imagine the impact it’s going to have when they come onto 7plus for the first time, free to Australians.
“We think it’s significant. And the other great thing about sport is we acquired the digital rights, not for more of the same audience, but for new audience. And so those audiences that’ll come and watch on 7 Plus, once again, will sit completely alongside the broadcast audiences that we see.
“They’re entirely complementary. And that’s been our experience in every major sporting event, Olympics, AFL Grand Final, World Test Championship for cricket. It’s actually, again, just extending our demographic reach and adding audience.”
Ross is even more bold in his prediction for 2025.
“What you’re going to see is a radical shift in that landscape of free-to-air streamers, where 7 Plus will leapfrog 9, will leapfrog the ABC to become the dominant free-to-air streaming platform next year.”
For more comments from Ross and Roberts, listen to this week’s Mumbrellacast.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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topics
7plus
AFL
Angus Ross
cricket
DOC
Gereurd Roberts
Grosse Pointe Garden Society
Ludwig
Nine
Seven
St Denis Medical
Suits: LA
The Hunting Party
upfront
What does SVOD and BVOD mean?
Maybe I should know but I don’t. I hate it when people expect others to know what an acronym stands for.
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Why would the family even think about 30 mins of programming and 30 minutes of adverts, station promos,
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7plus first? Would be great if they came into 2025 with a quality upgrade.. on demand and live with no 1080p option available in this day and age..
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