It didn’t come home for England, but Optus Sport has scored a ‘substantial increase’ in new subscriptions
With the 2024 Euros coming to an end on Monday morning, England may not have won, but Optus Sport sure did.
Spain took out the tournament by beating England 2-1 in a hotly-contested match, with people all over Australia getting up at 5am on Monday to watch the game.
Speaking to Mumbrella after the final, head of Optus Sport, Howard Rees, said the tournament – as well as the Copa America competition which also wraps up on Monday – has been an enormous success for the streamer.
“We’ve seen incredible engagement on platform and across our channels over the past four weeks, which has been extremely pleasing and is a credit to the passion and hard work of the team who have worked tirelessly to bring these events to Australians,” he said.
Though he could not disclose official numbers, Rees said Optus Sport has seen “ a substantial increase” of new subscriptions, while two games from this year’s tournament now sit in the top five most viewed matches of all time on Optus Sport.
“We have also added over 1 million followers and seen over 600 million video views on our social channels,” Rees added.
It comes after Clive Dickens, vice president, TV, content and product development at Optus, told Mumbrella last week that Optus Sport has separated itself from the rest of the streamers with its coverage of international football, which also includes exclusive rights to the English Premier League and the recently-acquired Emirates FA Cup.
“We don’t directly compete with the fantastic products that come out of Kayo and Fox Sports,” Dickens said.
“We don’t directly compete with the amazing coverage that our free to air broadcasters give sports… but it’s really important for our increasingly diverse customer base to have this passion for the beautiful world game.”
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Neil Griffiths is the Managing Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the company in October 2023.
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Overall Optus Sport is hugely expensive for what you get.
For a couple of key tournaments in the Euros & Copa a month subscription would be good return for viewers. Watch heaps of games and highlights for your $25. Could get down to 1$ a game.
But when we get into the regular season and most of us only care about following 1 team, it’s a maximum of 2 games a week but for the majority 1. Then there are international breaks where your club side might not play for a fortnight. At best it’s going to be $3ish a game but often $12 in some months.
I’d guess a lot of churn out for Optus. And how many internet and phone plans did they sell off this?
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