Stan eyes live sport streaming with Nine tie-up
The Australian
May 04, 2015 12:00AM
There could be an upset to sport rights negotiations with Stan’s chief executive Mike Sneesby indicating Nine and Stan could jointly bid for key properties.
Stan, Nine and Fairfax Media’s new subscription video-on-*demand service could stream sport, Sneesby said at a lunch panel on media disruption hosted by The Australian and IBM last Thursday.
In a chat with Diary afterwards, he went further, saying he’d already examined the model in overseas markets.
“There’s nothing technologically or legally that would prevent us from moving in that direction,” Sneesby said.
“We don’t have any plans to stream sports on the platform, but I wouldn’t rule that out. If you look at Viaplay (the streaming service in the Nordic region), their model is streaming sport with TV and movies and it works.”
It will be interesting to see if this is more than posturing as the sports rights battle heats up, with NRL and AFL negotiations taking place simultaneously. Soccer could also come into the picture, now that it looks like SBS is letting it go.
But, as Foxtel CEO Richard Freudenstein pointed out, if sports were to be included on a streaming service such as Stan, the price would inevitably rise from $10 a month.
Despite being surrounded by News Corp types, Sneesby was feeling confident about his figures. He said Stan had reached almost 200,000 subscribers.
But he refused to say how many were paying subscribers or how many had signed beyond the free 30-day trial.
“We’re seeing conversion rates from the free trial into paid above expectations,” Sneesby said.
“We are confident from data we have from our CDN (content delivery network) in Australia that we are one of the biggest drivers of data consumption on the internet today. Netflix is there too; so is YouTube.”
Just as with free-to-air TV, the wet weather in NSW has been great for streaming services.
Stan’s total Sydney viewing hours increased by more than 30 per cent, week on week, on the Anzac Day weekend when there was torrential rain.
Browne back for bids
Jeff Browne is returning to Nine to run its NRL and AFL rights *discussions, having taken time off to travel overseas with his new wife, independently wealthy Perth businesswoman Rhonda Wyllie.
On what is said to be a sizeable salary, no less than $1 million a year, Browne will lead the negotiations for Nine’s sporting rights.
His connections to the AFL are pretty solid, so it’s possible Nine will have a serious shot at the AFL as well — or at least try to get a game a week.
Seven could have the Friday night and Saturday night games, while Nine might take a Sunday afternoon game to show in *VictorIa, Adelaide and Perth, while rugby league plays on the main channel in Sydney and Brisbane. In those markets, they may screen the AFL game on a multi-channel. As usual, it’s going to be a highly competitive bidding process, especially with both Nine and Seven newly cashed-up.
