What’s the strategy of Stan Sport?
With the SVOD platform moving into live sports broadcasting, Thinkerbell general manager Ben Shepherd examines the road ahead for Stan.
When Stan announced it had won the broadcast rights for the Australian Rugby Union, it was a result most of us didn’t see coming when then CEO Raelene Castle signaled her intent to test the market almost 12 months ago.
The idea of a sporting code undergoing a normal market review to gauge the value of their rights is, theoretically, a relatively normal exercise in governance. Castle found out the hard way that the practicalities of the Australian market are a bit different when she was moved on just months later.
The narrative at the time was that Optus had expressed interest in acquiring the rights in order to add them to their Optus Sport bundle. The presence of a second legitimate bidder gave Castle the confidence to rebuke Foxtel’s re-up offer to continue its relationship with the code.
In 1 February wrote an analysis piece where I explained that the Foxtel and RA relationship was of such mutual benefit that both parties needed the other equally. RA needed the money at a time where the sport had become lost in a commercial no mans land, and Foxtel needed to hold the code as a risk avoidance strategy due to the volume of Foxtel subs in the elderly, more affluent core base of Union.
