Report to Foxtel’s support forum immediately
Things are looking dire at foxtel. Racking up huge losses. How is this business model sustainable. These people running it are idiots.
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The cricket Australia content contract has been one of the worst sporting rights deal ever done, great for Cricket Australia very very very bad for Seven and Foxtel, Seven can spin it all they want, they were the biggest looses in this by having to make a shit deal with News Corp otherwise it would of been locked out of summer sports rights while News Corp is holding Australian viewers to ransom (re: subscription) if they want to watch Saturday night cricket and the International ODI/T20 matches, how Seven got conned into this deal … well that management team is now gone.
Nine were the big winners by walking away from cricket matches in Australia (but staying in the game for matches outside of Australia) and getting the Tennis Australia broadcast partner deal where Nine get virtually 99% of what Tennis Australia pumps out.
As for Foxtel, Kayo simply put can’t be sustained at its present entry price point, they will have to start charging more or gulp start putting commercials into games because no way can it survive in its present incarnation, the Saudi’s can only tolerate Murdoch loosing so much money and Telstra Media is on the prowl looking for content and hey Telstra really don’t care about Foxtel or Kayo as much as they do their own offering and they hold the keys to the distribution.
Again if only the old man had not waged war on Rudds FTTP NBN, but what else is new.
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Nine staying in the game also in Australia by virtue of Domain as naming sponsor of the test series and also Macquarie Radio’s cricket coverage.
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Foxtel has been running on the back of shareholder loans for sometime now - even getting to the point where one shareholder has said that they wont put any more money in.
Increasing the price point will see people leave - its already perceived to be overpriced
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I reckon some of the huge losses are related to Foxtel’s programming deals with US suppliers especially HBO. They cost a lot of money. But if Foxtel lets the deals expire it risks losing even more subscribers. It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
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well they are not growing subscriber base over on traditional pay TV which is subsidising Kayo, so either they scale back on sports or they insert commercials in the live game time play to make up for the short fall.
Take your example of HBO - if Foxtel let that deal lapse, it would more then likely accelerate plans for HBOs streaming service to launch here, so not only does it lose Foxtel content it contributes to fragmentation of the market where Foxtel are probably the biggest target for customer loss.
One of the issues with some of these deals is that they are often negotiated at high points in the offering - HBO’s output has been strong recently and the deal with Foxtel will recognise that in a higher dollar figure, but its trading on past performance for future return - all HBO need is a few dud performing programs for that to change.
Given that the vast majority of the sports available on Kayo are in line with what Fox Sports / ESPN / BeIN are showing, the capacity to insert stuff ‘over the top’ in coverage may not exist (especially for live content, catch-up content would be much simpler)
I think Kayo needs to go the other way and try and increase coverage over what’s on Foxtel - make it a point of difference - especially when streaming allows a lot more flexibility around event coverage then the linear services offer.
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of course it does, its not the same stream from the server, Fox Sports can insert ads at any point they want, they choose not to as its a selling point that there service is “ad-free” however they have to make money somewhere and if they are loosing subs from traditional pay TV which subsidises kayo then so be it, otherwise scale back on sports and let them go to other service providers.
Foxtel is dying a faster death then even they are prepared to admit and haemorrhaging subs from one platform to the other is actually far worse as the profit margin is a lot lower.
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It’s more from sports rights. They pay way too much and they’ve been so selfish in acquiring everything that it hasn’t translated to more subscribers and therefore they’re paying for it in massive losses. They deserve what they’re getting. It’s so bad for their staff but they never innovated and now they’re being crushed with losses.
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Some might think I am against pay TV, I’m not, what I don;t like is simulcasting, this is the biggest issue right now with pay TV.
It’s simply not working for any body, look at NRL and AFL, both are way down because on the TV side the viewers are inclined to be at war with each other , look at Bathurst 1000, the ratings were split with Ten just winning out (due to the regional networks) even though Fox Sports/Kayo put everything they had behind it, instead of working together they had separate broadcasts, I personally watched via WIN and as such the commercials were fine since the regional based commercials are just that regional based.
Sporting bodies are greedy at the same time, you can’t blame then though.
I’ll say it again, no way can News corp sustain such losses, eventually even they have to report back their masters and with the old man himself loosing the plot has to go back to his investors and say yep either give us more money or we have to back off, look at what he had to do in the US with 20 Century (sold to Disney) & Fox Network (divested of interest) + Fox Sports Net (sold to Sinclair ).
Kayo has to make changes, ether charge more or start inserting ads during game play, there is no if’s or but’s abut it.
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Based on info in the November Foxtel Magazine, Fox One, Fox Crime and Fox Funny will all be in HD. Fox Hits will be in SD. This means the number of HD channels increases by 2 (Binge was HD. TV Hits, and 111Funny were not in HD)
This equates to 50% of channels are now HD or 4K.
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Seems The Comedy Channel is losing its +2 channel.
And is still not HD
Stan could pick up HBO in 2022?
With catch up services +1 and +2 channels are becoming more irrelevant than they were. I’ve never seen the point of them as you have been able to record live television since the 1980s.
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They’ve also removed Movies Disney +2 and 111 Funny +2 instead of replacing them with new +2 channels.
I missed that one. Weird they gave Crime and Hits a +2 and not Funny.
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Idiots is the right way to describe Foxtel management. They’ve made two fundamental errors over the past decade:
- Not Having a Cogent Streaming Strategy: With all the content Foxtel produces/licenses, they could have had a massive ‘leg up’ in the streaming market. Instead, not only have their inaction cost them but their streaming products have been a mess. Presto was doomed to fail from the beginning for numerous reasons (eg; limited device support, Foxtel holding back on content, UI was shit, etc) while Foxtel Play/Now has changed so many times it’s hard to keep up with what the product is actually meant to offer.
- Sports Rights: It seems no one at Foxtel actually considered before going after the Australian cricket rights whether they can afford to shoulder the burden of another expensive sports rights deal on top of their AFL and NRL rights. Logic should have told them that they can’t afford to have three expensive rights deals unless they either a) Raised prices or b) Engage in significant cost cutting. As we’ve seen not just this week with them firing/axing Neroli Meadows but this year with the cutbacks to their motorsport and A-League coverage that they’re doing an awful lot of cost cutting.
Kayo already does replace some Fox Sports ad breaks with their own ads for some events. The trouble is often they don’t have enough ads to fill the ad break so 1/2 of the breaks consists of a looping Kayo logo animation
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So what was the news about News Corp bailing out Foxtel ?
Did Foxtel miss a $213 million payment in July that News Corp had to borrow money to pay it for Foxtel as Telstra refused to provide any funding for it?