Kayo and Binge now represent more than 40% of Foxtel’s total advertising, according to News Corp CEO Robert Thomson.
He was releasing News Crops June quarter and full year results.
Foxtel's June quarter revenue, adjusted for currency fluctuations, was up 2% to $US506 million. A strong US dollar brought the rise down to 1%.
“We believe Foxtel is particularly well-positioned for both subscriber and advertising growth as Kayo and Binge have gained traction given their unique strengths in sports and entertainment programming," Thomson said.
"Those two services added almost 200,000 paying subscribers in the quarter and digital advertising now represents more than 40% of Foxtel’s total advertising with Kayo growing 42% compared to the prior year and the recently rolled-out
ad offering at BINGE growing fourfold."
He said the launch of Hubbl, Foxtel's aggregation solution to app hopping, is still in its early days but more than 30% of Hubbl customers are new to Foxtel and about 75% purchase an additional Foxtel product along with their device and subscription.
"Foxtel continued to generate strong cash flow as we were able to monetise our long-term sports rights across multiple platforms,” he said.
Streaming accounted for 32% of circulation and subscription revenue, up from 29%.
Total closing paid subscribers across the Foxtel Group were nearly 4.7 million, up 1% on the previous yhear.
Total paid streaming subscribers reached a record 3.2 million, increasing 5% and accounting for nearly 70% of the total paying subscriber base. Kayo added 108,000 subscribers and BINGE 76,000 compared to the prior quarter.
"This speaks to the success of our winter sport codes and strong entertainment content," said News Corp CFO Susan Panuccio said.
Foxtel ended the June quarter with over 1.2 million residential broadcast subscribers, down 10%. Broadcast churn was 11.7% versus 11.1% in the prior year but down from over 13% last quarter.
Broadcast ARPU (average revenue per user) rose 6% to A$90, benefiting from new pricing and packaging plans in March. As a result, broadcast revenues declined at the lowest rate in constant currency in over five years.
“We plan to continue to scale streaming products while retaining high value broadcast customers through improved ARPU and
churn measures," said Panuccio.
"While we anticipate the rate of investment at Hubbl to be lower in Fiscal 2025, we do expect modestly higher programming costs related to sports rights escalators.”
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