Seven West Media

[Jeffmister]

@NewsWeary

Seven West Media should be nervous and in fear of being left behind. They’re going to need to adapt and form partnerships quickly if they intend to compete on a rapidly changing playing field that sees SVODs like Stan and Paramount+ becoming key components of Nine and Ten’s business models.

Yeah, history has shown that Seven ‘kicking the tires’ on being involved with Stan when Nine gave them the opportunity to do so in 2014 was a monumental strategic blunder.

Been thinking a lot about Seven’s subscription streaming options recently (due to another post which I never got a chance to respond to) and it seems like they have three avenues they could pursue:

1. 7Plus Subscription Tier: This was something that was going to happen in 2018 but it never ultimately happened for some reason. A potential subscription could offer ad-free viewing (something which forms the basis of ITV and Channel 4’s subscription offering for their catch-up services) as well as full access to 7Plus’ entire catalogue (obviously this would require some content which is currently freely available to be put behind the paywall). While adding a subscription element to 7Plus would be the most ‘straight-forward’ option, it probably would attract the least subscribers (unless Seven invested heavily in acquiring/producing exclusive shows for the package).

2. Joining Forces with Binge: The last time Seven partnered up with Foxtel for a SVOD service (Presto), it didn’t end well. However, I would argue Presto was always doomed to fail for a range of reasons from the terrible UI to Foxtel holding back all of their premium content and the endless promotions which allowed users to access it for free month after month. By contrast, Binge has a much better UI, content offering and pricing structure. Seven joining forces with Foxtel for Binge would boost its content library (particularly its Australian content offering) whilst providing scope for the two companies to invest in original content which can debut on Binge and potentially air later on Seven/7Plus.

3. Joining Forces with a Yet-to-be-Launched Service: Services like Peacock, Discovery+ and Starz Play come to mind when you think about this. The issue is all of the major media companies have tended to want to go it alone when it comes to launching and operating new SVOD services for obvious reasons. Indeed, the closest some have come to co-operation is licensing another network’s shows/content library (eg; Discovery+ licensing non-fiction content from A&E Networks). As such, it might be hard/impossible for Seven to go down this avenue. If they can manage to do so though, it would allow them to promote a subscription service that would have a substantial library of ‘big name’ content which would attract potential subscribers.