Stan claims 600,000 active subscriber mark
Streaming service Stan has given a rare insight into its actual paying subscriber numbers, claiming it has had 1.4m sign-ups and currently has 600,000 active subscribers.
The active subscriber number, understood to include paying subscribers and free trials, was 50,000 higher than revealed by the service in early September. It is unclear how many of those subscribers are paying the $10 per month rate, but it claims a conversion rate of 75% from free trials.
Details were revealed in a presentation put together for an investor call on Wednesday afternoon, which included graphs showing the service is still anticipating breaking even in the second quarter of the 2018 financial year.
According to that graphic the service will need 1m active subscribers to reach the break even stage.
Stan is jointly owned by Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment Co.
Another chart showed the flow of sign-ups, with an initial surge after launch in January 2015 followed by a large dip, with the launch of the first season of original series No Activity last September coinciding with a large surge in sign-ups at the end of the year, building up to exclusive content including Sherlock, Billions and Better Call Saul at the start of the year.
In yet another graphic the service claims average viewing time has tripled from September 2015 to September 2016, while it claims around 75% of people who sign up for a trial convert to a full paying subscription.
Content is also featured in the deck, with the ‘content roadmap’ showing the service has the rights to the third series of Mozart in the Jungle, a series created by US-based streaming service Amazon Prime.
While Amazon is tipped to launch its Prime service in Australia before the end of the year to showcase its new show The Grand Tour, starring the former hosts of Top Gear, it would not have rights locally to two of its most popular original series, including Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent.
Another graphic showed the service only holds rights for two other properties in the local region, one from NBC Universal and another from Fremantle Media.
The deck also indicates Stan will get the first run locally of Purity, a Showtime drama starring James Bond actor Daniel Craig and based on Jonathan Franzen’s novel, which starts production next year.
Last night Stan also hosted a blue carpet event to launch the second series of cop comedy, No Activity.
This is really healthy. Besides the original content, Stan has an awesome product and suite of shows. Really important for the Australian consumer and production industry that Netflix has local competition.
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Does that mean that 800,000 of their sign-ups are NOT active? That can’t be healthy.
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