Seven sales boss: Australian market only big enough for two streaming players
Burnette
The sales boss of Seven West Media believes the Australian streaming video on demand (SVOD) market is only big enough to sustain two services, describing it as a “dynamic game of attrition”.
Chief revenue officer Kurt Burnette told Mumbrella he believes the streaming market, which currently includes Foxtel and Seven West Media’s joint venture Presto, Fairfax Media and Nine’s Entertainment Co’s Stan, struggling Quickflix, and the forthcoming entrance of US giant Netflix, would eventually be whittled down to just “two serious players”.
But he would not be drawn on who would be left standing, but said he was confident in the partnership between Seven and Foxtel over Presto which launched officially a fortnight ago and is due to undergo an overhaul in the coming months.
His comments are absolutely correct… to bad Presto will be first on the chopping block, followed by old mate Stan.
Remember Galaxy TV & Optus Cable? Thought so.
I checked out Presto last night and their content looks pretty good actually. Now I’m not one to deliberately hand sir Rupert my money, but I don’t think everyone in Australia has such high standing morals such as myself.
Me thinks Stan will be the one to fall off the perch. Quckflix too, but isn’t that already dead?
Netflix will destroy all.
Foxtel and 7 will lose out.
Seven West has a history of failures outside of traditional broadcast
– i7
– C7 Sport
– Unwired
– Yahoo7 (has never reached the heights ninemsn did)
Presto aside, Foxtel has issues with its main prize, its Pay TV business. This will hamper Presto’s competitiveness as its there to protect the Foxtel base. Foxtel issues won’t stem from content but technology. IQ3 was first announced in 2012.. Bandwidth and capacity issues on cable and satellite mean it cant broadcast more HD without a significant network upgrade. It certainly can’t do 4K (iQ3 is provided by Pace and it hasn’t got a 4K solution) when internet competitors like Netflix can. Sony and Google. Netflix and UHD. Manufacturers are falling over themselves when it comes to showcasing IPTV. Technology has driven much of these audience shifts. Foxtel hasnt kept up. Presto cannot outshine Foxtel and therefore it will fail.
Not exactly a winning match.
You can hate on Foxtel all you want but before you predict Presto’s demise you might want to ask how long News and Telstra + Seven West can afford to support it as a loss making venture while they go after market-share. The answer is a very, very long time and there’s an even longer list of buyers or partners waiting for when they decide to pull out.
#4 History Repeats I think Presto will fail but not because of technology; more to do with the fact Foxtel will never give Presto what it needs to be successful when compared to its competitors.
Time and time again the incumbent refuses to innovate due to the rivers of gold in the existing business model only to have someone else come in and completely change the landscape.
I think Stan is in with a chance, was really surprised by the content available on there wherelse Presto didn’t really interest me. That said, we all know Netflix is here to stay,
Agree there’s only room for 2 major subscription streaming players: Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The sooner Australian broadcasters realise that the internet doesn’t have boarders the sooner they’ll start producing content that people want to actually pay for to watch.
If the music streaming market can only sustain one meaningful player – Spotify vs a bunch of other also rans, I’d say SVOD may well end up the same.
Not sure anybody ever wins a war of attrition.