• Welcome to the forums of Green & Gold Rugby.
    We have recently made some changes to the amount of discussions boards on the forum.
    Over the coming months we will continue to make more changes to make the forum more user friendly for all to use.
    Thanks, Admin.

Broadcast options for Australian Rugby

Adam84

Rod McCall (65)
Point one - don't believe this, apparently Nine are preparing a giga bid for the NRL and Stan itself isn't going anywhere (assuming the Sports part can be ramped up or down now the infrastructure is there). Hypothetically Optus would also be in the mix. TBH I don't think Rugby Australia have the luxury of thinking two broadcast deals ahead lol

Point two - look no further than pubs. Impossible to get Super on these days in Sydney. Not saying it had or would dominate screens when the other codes are on but just the option of that visibility is so important
Yeah the availability of Stan’s in pub is a big issue. That been said, even when rugby was on Foxtel it was often hard to get a non rugby put to chuck one of the channels onto rugby
 

HooperPocockSmith

Bill Watson (15)
This might be a very privileged take of mine but given the number of NRL/AFL games behind a paywall at Fox, would rugby really be that inaccessible if we went back? Most people I know have a kayo subscription and prefer the Fox NRL coverage to Nine.

it’d be interesting to see the % of households with a Kayo subscription. If you really want to follow the AFL or NRL it’s a non-negotiable that you pay your $30/month. Especially if your team rarely gets the big ticket time slots.
 

Dan54

David Wilson (68)
I actually wonder after reading all these posts, if Fox will actually make much of a bid. Would they attract EXTRA subscirbers than they have now, as many seem to allude that most already have Fox/Kayo. No good paying much money if you not going to get more subsciptions to cover the 4050 mill a year?
 

LeCheese

Greg Davis (50)
This might be a very privileged take of mine but given the number of NRL/AFL games behind a paywall at Fox, would rugby really be that inaccessible if we went back? Most people I know have a kayo subscription and prefer the Fox NRL coverage to Nine.

it’d be interesting to see the % of households with a Kayo subscription. If you really want to follow the AFL or NRL it’s a non-negotiable that you pay your $30/month. Especially if your team rarely gets the big ticket time slots.

Kayo stats are easy to find. As of 21/09/2023:
"over 1m subscribers, 85%+ are active each week"
"40% of Kayo's audience have a household income of $100,000 per year or higher"

Stan is a lot harder to find up-to-date figures. From 2021:
"The last time Stan Sport revealed subscriber numbers was in May this year and the number was 150,000. Sneesby was reluctant to reveal the exact number, apart from saying it was bigger. He did note again that the total Stan audience is 2.3m+ active accounts with 6m+ of the 8.5m Australian households having a Stan account.

Sneesby did say: “The number I am happy to give away is that the Stan Sport audience number on Wednesday night for the rugby union Australia v France was over 200,000 on top of the Nine and 9Now audience.”

The rugby union audience on 9Gem in metro markets that night was 323,000."
 

The Ghost of Raelene

Simon Poidevin (60)
I actually wonder after reading all these posts, if Fox will actually make much of a bid. Would they attract EXTRA subscirbers than they have now, as many seem to allude that most already have Fox/Kayo. No good paying much money if you not going to get more subsciptions to cover the 4050 mill a year?
I already have Kayo and I’d guess the majority on here would as well?
 

Tomikin

David Codey (61)
Don't want kayo again was rubbish...Stan coverage is much better then Foxtel...I hope it stays where it is
 

PhilClinton

Mark Loane (55)
I know beggars can’t be choosers, but I’d love to know if Stan are looking to make a bigger splash on the sports streaming market and take the ESPN contract or similar from Fox.

Our game needs broader exposure and I think we underestimate how many casuals will flick over whilst flicking through a sports catalogue. The problem is the options on Stan are quite limited so no one really goes to it for sports only.
 

Wilson

Phil Kearns (64)
I'd much prefer we stay with Stan, their output and engagement with the game has been light years ahead of what fox was offering at the end of their time.

That said, fox bidding (along with Amazon and others) can only be a good thing, without actual competition for the broadcast rights we have no leverage and very little chance of improving our broadcast deal in terms of money or FTA exposure.
 

Dan54

David Wilson (68)
I already have Kayo and I’d guess the majority on here would as well?
Yep so they don't really have a need to pay big money for rugby as they already have the subscibers. With pay TV etc, the holy grails isn't eyeballs, but who is paying subscriptions from what I understand.
 

The_Brown_Hornet

John Eales (66)
I've got Kayo and Stan, mainly because I watch several different sports (cricket, rugby, Aussie Rules, baseball etc), but I like both and it doesn't cost me a lot. It's certainly cheaper than what I could be paying for Foxtel (which I haven't had for over 20 years).
 

Wilson

Phil Kearns (64)
Yep so they don't really have a need to pay big money for rugby as they already have the subscibers. With pay TV etc, the holy grails isn't eyeballs, but who is paying subscriptions from what I understand.
From a kayo perspective not so much, but from a broader media groups perspective they still need as full a sport offering as possible to draw subscribers in. Warner Bros have announced they're going to be launching a streaming platform in Australia in 2024, this will Binge (and maybe foxtel) lose HBO original content, which is far and away the most valuable properties they own. Without these they're likely to bleed subscribers and there are really any other international sources for content they could sign up to offset that.

This means they'll need to be getting maximum return from the sport side of things in the near term to give them the best chance of finding a way to keep their broader entertainment offering alive. From their perspective that means they need to block Stan/9 from making a succesful whole of game bid for the NRL. Taking rugby off of Stan a few years before they get the chance to make that bid would negatively impact Stan's preparation. The bare minimum from their perspective would be to make sure Stan/9 didn't get a deal on the rugby so were playing with a bit less money when those NRL roll around.
 

Mick The Munch

Vay Wilson (31)
Foxtel's priority was League and AFL as they have skin in the game. The coverage for union was awful, one of the reasons no one watched........urgh I can still hear Kafe and Kearns droning on - no thanks - and I i don't want to give the Murdochs any money
 

Ignoto

Peter Sullivan (51)
This might be a very privileged take of mine but given the number of NRL/AFL games behind a paywall at Fox, would rugby really be that inaccessible if we went back? Most people I know have a kayo subscription and prefer the Fox NRL coverage to Nine.

it’d be interesting to see the % of households with a Kayo subscription. If you really want to follow the AFL or NRL it’s a non-negotiable that you pay your $30/month. Especially if your team rarely gets the big ticket time slots.
The argument isnt about whether having Union back with Fox/Kayo gets you more eyeballs (it most likely does), it's whether Rugby in Australia is better off on Fox or Stan.

We have decades worth of evidence to show us how Fox ran Union when theyg had it and now we have a couple years of coverage on Stan.

It is night and day which platform puts our game in a better light. That will have a bigger impact on the casuals wanting to watch something.

Additionally, most of the casual viewers that have fox will most likely be watching NRL or AFL, so you're talking about a tiny percentage of people who may casually watch Union over another sport. So, with that in mind, why do we drop the product to a sub optimal one on the odd chance we may get a dozen or so extra eyeballs?

Anyway, I think it's a mute point. Most people have more than one streaming platform, Stan just needs to show why people should choose it over Netflix, Amazon or one of the other major tv/movie streamers.
 
Top