Who’s going to buy Foxtel?
Yesterday morning, News Corp’s CEO Robert Thomson flagged “third-party interest in a potential transaction involving the Foxtel Group” during the company’s quarterly results.
In other words, we’re selling up, shareholders. Time to hand in your remotes.
News Corp owns 65% of Foxtel, with Telstra owning the remaining 35%, and the “third-party interest” suggests its not Telstra looking to do the buy out. We could speculate endlessly about who might be making the play – it could be Elon Musk for all we know, or Wesfarmers looking to diversify – but what exactly would they be buying?
Foxtel must reduce its PRICE regardless of what the new incarnation of the company will be.I’m paying about $90 for an old box.I don’t want to stream as I do have buffering issues.But being a sports nut, especially soccer how can I justify that amount long term when I get Optus Sport essentially “free” as an Optus telco subscriber and Paramount costs $10 for A-League and Stan with Euro soccer, Rugby and tennis is about $30.And then there’s beinsports for more soccer about $15.Logically, there must be some “aggregation” for us sports nuts and I believe Foxtel must reduce its price to lower than $50, probably $40 for the “box lovers” and news freaks like myself.Fantastic overview of the history by Nathan Jolly by the way!!
Most of the US based media conglomerates would be out.
Warner Discovery is launching Max in Australia in the coming years and only needs to wait out it’s HBO license ending with Foxtel. They’re also not having a great year with a 9.1 billion dollar write down.
Paramount is out, since they just got bought themselves by Skydance and wouldn’t want to invite further scrutiny to that deal and will wait for seas to calm. They’re also not in the best financial shape to be buying an overseas cable network.
Disney wouldn’t touch it since they’re softening on streaming investment, whilst they have to pony up the cash to buy the remainder of Hulu off Comcast.
NBC Universal is extremely unlikely.
Amazon is doing fine with their current strategy and already has a strong subscriber base through Prime.
Hard to see who would benefit from buying Foxtel unless it was being picked up for pennies on the dollar.
Does anyone at Mumbrella that Optus Vision was a thing? Why would Optus want to take on an asset it happily rid itself of years ago.
Unless Foxtel would split out the Hubbl/Streamotion assets, there’s no point in speculating.
I also find it a ridiculous suggestion that Elon Musk would buy Foxtel. An atrocious man who doesn’t need any ideas about entering the Australian market.
Typical Murdoch fan boy piece. No mention of the mixed channel options where you had to buy multiple packages to get sport channels you wanted.
Foxtel is shooting themselves in the foot though by continuing to increase prices even as the lose the rights to more shows. With Binge and Kayo growing, Sky News having its own subscription service and deals with LG and Samsung for smart TVs, the linear Foxtel business is looking bleak.
Optus also own and operate the satellites that Foxtel (still) use to broadcast on. The same satellites that already carry Optus sport. Some good synergies there, even if that is a legacy delivery method nowadays.
Chris,
Elon would have no need to buy an antiquated company like Foxtel.
Old iron companies can be worthless to elite tech billionaires.
“I also find it a ridiculous suggestion that Elon Musk would buy Foxtel. An atrocious man” – What colour is your self landing rocket Chris?
The satellites referred to by Jurgen are redundant now.
Foxtel’s almost completely IP / internet driven these days with the iQ5 being IP only. Rollout of newer dish and cable-less iQ boxes to customer base is almost done.
The irony is that ‘killing the NBN to maintain their cable dominance’ conspiracy theory would actually be an own goal.
Foxtel Now relies on improved internet for all the devices customers now receive it on – phone, tablet, PC and TV.