A $26 basic subscription at Foxtel is ‘not a great experience’: CEO Patrick Delany
Foxtel’s churn is coming from low-value customers the company “shouldn’t have chased” because they were paying just $26 for a basic subscription that “is not a great experience” anyway, according to CEO Patrick Delany.
He added that the company’s sports streaming service, Kayo, has a churn rate that is “way below” what was anticipated, praising the platform as “the most successful media business to have been launched in the last 25 years, including Foxtel, if it’s owned by Australians”.
“Netflix is pretty good,” he said, speaking at yesterday’s Future of TV Advertising conference in Sydney. “But to have 400,000 paying customers for sports alone at a premium price of 25 bucks with no tricks, no bells, no whistles, is one hell of an achievement. It is a big business already.
“the most successful media business to have been launched in the last 25 years, including Foxtel, if it’s owned by Australians”.
Kayo – 400k subscribers, went backwards end of 19 …
Stan – 1.8m subscribers. Started by 2 Australian organisations. Sustained growth over last 3-4 years, EBIT positive.
Does PD look out the window?
Not to mention they just re-directed content they had already acquired for Foxtel. Stan literally started from scratch, at a time when streaming in Australia was barely a thing (apart from US Netflix VPN rips). One of the most ridiculous bits of spin I’ve ever seen.
Hey Patrick! The $65 subscription I have isn’t a great experience either.
Optus Sport announced 800k a few weeks back.
This bloke is dreamin’
Foxtel is a corporate dinosaur that continues to drag its feet not listening to consumer demand. All other platforms have the option of adding/subtracting packages at a click of the button but Fox you must phone in to alter packages…you can click to add, but must call to subtract… absolutely absurd behaviour. Not to mention the ridiculous price tag for the subpar packages, you can’t even truly decide what channels to pick, they just give a silly rough package of junk they want you to have and call it a choice. Plus they still think people want a clunky device that requires plugging in and setting up, laughable! In an age of affordable on demand streaming, these guys have zero clue.
Seriously, I have Foxtel, and it’s essentially for Sport. I now have movies aswell. Overall there’s still far too many channel, far too much filling. Surely they have stat’s in who’s watching what. And surely it wouldn’t be too hard for them to work out where to cut costs/channels.
They need a major revamp, a revamp that should have happened years ago.
Mr Delany may wish to check his own website.
The Foxtel Plus Bundle is currently being sold for $39.20 on a 12 month contract which represents a 20% discount from the normal price of $49 per month. Promo finishes on 3 March.
I guess it’s pleasing to see Mr Delany admit their entry level product is “not a great experience”. I wonder how his marketers feel about that – perhaps that’s why they all keep leaving the business?
If Foxtel could figure out a way to monetise hubris they’d be a highly profitable business.