The Australia Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has cleared the way for subscription video on demand joint venture between Foxtel and Seven West Media, Presto TV, to go ahead, and for a management team to be appointed.
This morning the ACCC gave its tick to the joint venture, shortly after it had requested more information from the partners on the deal and about the state of play of the SVOD market in Australia.
While the entertainment bundle was launched in January, the joint venture had been unable to ramp up activity as it did not yet have formal clearance from the regulator to do so.
However, with ACCC approval now gained, Presto said the management team to oversee the joint venture would be approved “shortly”.
Presto director Sean James previously told AdNews that it would wait until the ACCC had given clearance on the deal before going to market with original Australian commissioned content.
“It was something that was very much in the planning when the partners sat down and formed the joint venture. So, subject to ACCC, we can have local commissioned content on the platform this year,” James said.
He also said Presto would focus on a content and technology roll out in the shorter-term though.
The ACCC clearance comes after Presto started to offer consumers free 30-day trials of the service, roughly 30 days after rival SVOD platform Stan offered trials.
Stan first offered free trials on 6 January, with those users having to make a decision late last month on whether or not to continue with the service, but the service formally launched on Australia Day.
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