By Martin Medcraf, Fox Sports Sales and Foxtel Partnerships Director, Foxtel Media
Collectively, the Foxtel Group services are now reaching close to 3 million sports subscribers across multiple 24/7 platforms, allowing our viewers to engage with the sport they love, when they want, and how they want it via Foxtel Now, Kayo Sports, Venues, Digital, Social. Our streaming services continue to attract droves of viewers, with 41% of total viewing now coming from streaming.
With consistent increases in viewership comes record-breaking audiences for our most watchable winter codes. In 2022, AFL, NRL and F1 all enjoyed their number one seasons of all time on Foxtel services. The NRL brought an 11% year-on-year growth in viewership, while the AFL season grew 19% year-on-year. Kayo Sports alone averaged more than 230 million minutes streamed weekly across AFL and NRL last season.
The growing popularity of F1 saw Foxtel audiences grow 30% year-on-year for an average of 402,000 per race. The sponsorship dollars appear to be following the audience trends too, with 12 Matchday partners secured for FOX League, 15 matchday partners for FOX Footy, and excitingly, we have two new major brands sponsoring our F1 coverage. Netball is in a really strong position too with the same amount of Super Netball sponsors already committed to 2023, compared to the number of partners that supported the inaugural season on FOX Sports last year.
In fact, brands can now reach more NRL fans through Foxtel Group services than traditional FTA. For example, when looking at average live game audiences across the 2022 NRL season, brands can reach almost three times more of the 25~54-year-old audience.
However, numbers are just a presentation of our success; there's more to why the best sports streaming experience is on Foxtel Group products.
World-class technology
Our FOX Rover camera and Libero analysis technology, features of Fox Sports Australia’s world class coverage, brings fans closer to the game with better angles and greater insights. Libero analysis technology captures more statistics and generates in-depth analysis for our viewers, while the FOX Rover gives sports fans up-close angles that make them feel as if they are right in the middle of action with their favourite players.
Premium content
In addition to all the excitement on the field or pitch, our expert commentary teams and talent bring the best discussions and entertainment to our fans. The power of sports lies in the emotion that it invokes and expanding this with high quality commentary creates much higher engagement.
Watchability
With great content and low ad clutter, Fox Sports’ coverage is designed for the viewer who wants a premium experience. At Foxtel Media, we're protective about our content and advertising ratio, making sure that we maintain our high standards of watchability.
From recent FoxTest research with Amplified Intelligence, we've found that low clutter plus engaged audience equals greatest attention volume. So, in every match of the AFL Regular Season and every match of the NRL Regular Season, we continue to stand by our policy of no ad breaks in live play. This means fans are consuming important live games in an uninterrupted and uncluttered advertising environment, which provides greater cut through at other junctures.
An enhanced viewing experience
Kayo Sports is Australia’s leading sports streaming service boasting over 1.1 million subscribers. This year, the platform will see several product updates that will help enhance the viewing experience.
Product enhancements coming to the service include:
- A picture-in-picture pop-out player so viewers can keep watching Kayo Sports even when they click out of the App.
- Key moments so viewers can skip through the game and know where to jump in to catch the best bits
- Updated stats running alongside games
- An "Up Next" feature that enables a seamless viewing experience, so viewers can watch one game into the next without having to search for something to watch
- "Continue Watching" feature will be expanded across more content allowing viewers to pick up where they left off faster.
These upgrades will help make it even easier to enjoy all the great sport on offer, resulting in greater engagement and increased consumption.
Through testing via FoxTest and our commitment to creating a premium streaming experience, we've figured out the best formula to retain attention and keep audiences’ adrenaline pumping. As Amplified Intelligence’s research has demonstrated, the platform on which ads are placed is the most important factor influencing attention.
With Foxtel Group services working in tandem to reach a wide cross section of the Australian population, advertising across our services will deliver powerful results for brands. We’re old hands at carefully and consistently balancing viewer experience and advertising and that’s how we have created the best sports streaming environment for ads.
Sourcing: Linear (STV) & (Metro): OzTAM National Panel, OzTAM Metro Panel, Total People, Average Audience. VPM: OzTAM VPM Data, Total People, VPM Rating, LIVE + VOD (up to 7 Days). Kayo: Internal Data, LIVE Average Audience. Preliminary Overnight Data.
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