Foxtel left behind as Australians move to subscription video, says Roy Morgan Research
Netflix and Stan have seen their viewer base surge last quarter while Foxtel’s audience reach has slightly dropped, claims Roy Morgan research.
According to the research company, the number of Australians living in a household with a Netflix subscription stands at 9.8 million, up nearly 30% on a year ago, while Stan has surged 39.2% to pass the 2 million mark. Foxtel though saw a 2.7% drop to 5.4 million.
Australian users of Pay TV/Subscription TV services – June 2018 Qtr. cf. June 2017 Qtr.
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source, April – June 2017, n=13,200 Australians aged 14+ and April – June 2018, n=13,221 Australians aged 14+.
Overall, Roy Morgan found 13 million Australians have access to some form of Pay TV or subscription TV, up 11.7% on a year ago, with Fetch being the fastest growing local service after a 40.5% jump to 710,000 over the last year.
Large increases were also seen for the rebranded YouTube Premium now with over 1 million users, up 38.5% on a year ago and Amazon Prime Video, up 87.7% to 273,000 users.
Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan, says subscription video on demand is both a challenge and an opportunity for Australia’s incumbent media organisations, saying: “Leading streaming video provider Netflix is fast closing in on 10 million users spread across nearly 3.9 million households. 9.8 million Australians aged 14+ used Netflix in the June 2018 quarter which gives Netflix a market penetration of 48% among Australians aged 14+.
“However, although Netflix clearly is well ahead of its rivals, other SVODs are also growing strongly – and generally at a faster rate than even Netflix.
“Stan, the joint venture between new merger partners the Nine Entertainment Company and Fairfax, grew its user base by nearly 40% over the last year to top 2 million users in the June 2018 quarter.”
Stan will be fully owned by the Nine Entertainment Company should their merger with Fairfax be successful.
“The proposed merger between Nine and Fairfax consolidates ownership of Stan and opens up multiple opportunities for cross-promotion of the new company’s various media brands such as the Nine Network channels Nine, Gem and Go!, and leading Fairfax mastheads including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review,” continued Levine.
“In a changing media landscape, highlighted by the recent merger agreement between Nine and Fairfax, the impressive performance of SVOD in recent years shows there are avenues to growth for incumbent media businesses challenged by new entrants into the market.”
Foxtel disputed Roy Morgan’s analysis, and a company spokesperson told Mumbrella: “It is difficult to understand why Roy Morgan would use survey techniques to determine Foxtel’s subscriber numbers, when the true and reported numbers are publicly available and sit at 2.8 million, well above their estimate.
“This, combined with OzTam’s most recent Establishment Survey, puts the number of Australian’s living in a household with a Foxtel subscription at more than 7.7 million individuals.
“As Netflix do not release subscriber numbers, the survey provides a rough estimate on their behalf; however, Foxtel would strongly urge that Roy Morgan’s research use openly reported data where it is available in order to give an accurate and reliable summary.”
Marketing is crap.
Product is crap.
Customer experience is crap.
So the results are crap
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Great insight – Foxtel is old school – and the fact they treat their customers with such disdain is deplorable.
I will pay for content – but paying for content and then watching more ads that Free To Air really gets under my skin!
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Foxtel needs to change their modelling, it just doesn’t work with how Australian’s want to digest TV. Get rid of Movie/comedy/entertainment packs, offer one price for everything and I might put up with the ads…
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The only thing keeping Foxtel’s head above water is sport, the user experience is bad, they don’t innovate and they just don’t care.
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Foxtel will likely be where Presto is today in a few years.
Expensive product, poor cs, and great substitution means that it will soon only be Foxsports content (no ads during play?) that people are willing to pay for.
Would assume Stan will be ahead of Foxtel this time next year as well.
Foxtel was a great product for its time but, as with many things, time has moved on and the product has not.
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In the face of ad free Netflix, maybe it’s time for Foxtel to also leave MCN.
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Very interesting overview.
Do we know if the data includes Foxtel Now?
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If Foxtel didn’t have AFL and Formula One ……
I’m sure that is what is keeping is subscribers.
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Yet there will be a price increase for the basic Foxtel package from $26 to $29 from 1 October.. surely they should be looking at lowering the cost of entry – not increasing it?
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you can’t even get it on other TV boxes. You have to buy the Foxtel tv puck so user-hostile.
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I have Netflix and have been throughly enjoying it .the movie library is great but could be extended though otherwise its so cheap as well . i dont watch FTA tv ever , just fetch TV for the European soccer. don’t know how FTA TV will survive
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As a long time very happy Fetch TV customer Foxtel doesn’t make any sense from a value point of view. I get a great selection of subscription channels that complement what we get from FTA and if there is nothing there to watch it is super easy to bring up Netflix or Stan or Prime(not on Fetch yet). Sure it would be nice to get the local sports too but the price Foxtel charge is just too high.
I wish they would would be willing to offer the sports channels to Fetch too at a fair price but that is highly improbable as that is their only reason why anyone would subscribe now.
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That must be DISASTROUS for FTA stations that you don’t watch FTA TV eve. That means they won’t be able to sell campaigns with the target audience of “rolly”.
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YES. Thing is channel 506 (Motorsport) is all I’m interested in but I have to buy base pack at $25 then Sports pack at $25 then I want it in HD because let’s face it SD looks crap on TVs now another $10 then some races are like 2am in the morning so I need IQ another $10. $70 for one channel. Frankly? I hope they go down hard and someone else gets the Motorsport rights.
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Unfortunately Foxtel don’t help themselves when it comes to growing or simply retaining their subscriber base. Arrogant, self-obsessed and out of touch execs and other senior management who are well past their use-by date who change strategic direction like the wind (I’m still trying to figure out how Foxtel is “cheaper than your daily coffee”- that’s an awful lot of caffeine), and sadly no ability to focus on managing a product in the best interests of its subscribers. Charging $10 per month for the privilege of HD when HD channels are freely available on FTA is just one example of the contempt with which subscribers are treated, and they wonder why people are walking away from the service in preference for superior, more cost-effective content offerings.
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Just got rid of Foxtel,too expensive too many adverts,low value.
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Clearly i live in a motor sport bubble and was truly shocked to hear that foxtel is struggling. I thought foxtel now was the best thing ever….motogp, f1, wsb, v8s and some wsl, all awesome. Foxtel now has allowed me a sports viewing experience i used to dream of ie stream sport on huge projector screen in areas with no tv access. I have it on my phone, home and work computers, foxtel now box, in my shed and with my telstra service. I so hope this is fake news!
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Do you work for Foxtel Gavin? Is this a paid response of Mr Murdock ?
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The discussing thing about there technicians treatment Is:
Foxtel will charge a technician 3 times the price of a box if it goes missing,
And 99.9% of the time,
Foxtel will deliberately lose it in the system after being installed, and if the technician can’t find it in the system,
Because Foxtel delete box number from system,
even tho they know who has the equipment, they will charge the tech anyways because he couldn’t prove the location himself.
Absolute scum!
Working for them was the worst experience of my life and everyone I know that worked for them,
4 hours putting harness and installation and they pay the lowest rate of any company in australia.
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Well said my friend,
And they treat there installers like the lowest scum on earth,
They are getting rich of all corners of there practice,
I’ve met installers and had friends doing it,
They all have a deep burning of hate towards the treatment and payment of Foxtel
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You must live in a bubble my friend,
Kayo sports will provide all that coverage with less adds and no,
Rediculous base plan that we need to purchase before we choose something we actually want.
And obviously you can watch it on all those devices and more
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You must live in a bubble my friend,
Kayo sports will provide all that coverage with less adds and no,
Rediculous base plan that we need to purchase before we choose something we actually want.
And obviously you can watch it on all those devices and more
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We have just walked away from Foxtel along with many others.
Got sick of paying big dollars to watch copious amounts of ads and shows repeated ad nauseum just to fill the airwaves.
Fetch and Netflix are a far superior product and heaps cheaper.
Even when we were offered a reduced rate to remain with Fox
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