Nine confirms Fairfax as partner for $100m StreamCo joint venture
Nine Entertainment has announced Fairfax Media has come on board as a joint partner for new subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service StreamCo.
The companies will each inject up to $50 million into the venture over a “multi-year period” which will include advertising and marketing costs.
StreamCo is expected to launch in the 2015 financial year and will be headed by chief executive Mike Sneesby and operated independently of Nine’s and Fairfax’s existing media businesses. NEC CEO David Gyngell and Fairfax boss Greg Hywood will both sit on the board.
What a mistake Gyng. If there’s one company that has consistently fucked everything it touches digitally, it’s Fairfax.Going right back Into the 90’s and F2 [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy], so much potential, everything squandered. Better off taking your money to the dogs.
Surely, Fairfax would do better shoring up its loss making print arms rather than investing in a new co that will struggle in what is becoming a very crowded market place, with little content or price differentiation. So films will be in the $5.99-6.99 bracket, TV eps similarly priced. What Australians want is complete content and price transparency and parity with US markets, not more gouging and more of the same. Presto is struggling, has anyone looked at their subscriber numbers? What’s the business case?
Thanks for those thoughts, John Hartigan.
Interesting. I wonder what role SteamCo will play in future sports rights deals…
Oh la la! There’s 100 million that won’t be seen again.
Gyng and the sock puppet. Nine content and fairfax subscription expertise. Netflix will be shiitng bricks.
Some of the worst subscription marketing about, shame Fairfax, you coulda converted me once.
Gyng – if ya wanna improve viewers – give us what we really want.
Meself – I’d like to see a bit more biffo between you and the Packer-whacker!
That were real fun – real fun!
I can see what’s in this for fairfax, a largely print and text-based media co. But what does 9 get from partnering with fairfax? I guess the $50m contribution to costs isn’t chump change. In any event , this market is only big enough for one, maybe 2 viable players in subscription streaming . Who will it be: foxtel? Streamco? Seven? Netflix? Fetch? Amazon ? Quickflix? Apple? Starting to feel very crowded …
Nine could partner with Warren Buffett for a billion dollars and still botch an SVOD service.
Well said mechanic, Netflix will clean out all comers.
No mention of Quickflix, who have had an SVOD product in market for 5 years or so. I think their shares are going cheap at 0.0001 c
Stephen Byrne: Fairfax’s print division isn’t loss making. You’re thinking about News Corp (remember The Oz – 30mill loss per year). Fairfax has hundreds of thousands of digital subscribers – more than any other news outlet. Plenty of users for StreamCo to tap into
The Facts- if we could compare the detail I reckon they would be similar. Metros losing money. National papers losing money. Regionals making money. Note that fairfax puts domain into metro bucket when lots of domain revenue is regional ads
Just as News lumps REA and Foxsports/ and foxtel into its ” publishing” division to shore up the numbers from its Newspapers, so Fairfax lumps Domain into its metro division , which masks the state of affairs for its newspapers. Back out the revenue and profit from Domain (currently the powerhouse of the Fairfax business) and there would not be a lot of profit left in the newspapers.
this would only work if you got 7 and a few other broadcasters or rights holders onboard. Otherwise it’s just not broad enough to compete with Foxtel, Netflix, Apple etc…