KAYO SPORTS: One Year on – More big things ahead

It’s been one year since Kayo Sports launched in Australia and in that time they’ve achieved upwards of 400,000 paying customers which is a pretty great effort and shows the demand and capability of Australians to want for and pay for content like this.

Since launch over 65 million hours of sport has been streamed – everything from live sport to catch up mini’s and on-demand shows and documentaries.

One user who clearly needs to get a life streamed 483,360 minutes of content – that’s over 300 days of viewing!  I suspect it’s a few mates sharing one login, but we’ll leave that to Kayo to sort out.

Speaking with EFTM, Kayo CEO Julian Ogrin acknowledged the very crowded streaming Entertainment market that exists today in Australia, he said “We’re all competing for a share of the wallet“

“Australians only have so much money to spend on entertainment,” he said, “the advantage is we have the sports category.  Having 50 sports under one subscription service for $25, that gives our customer peace of mind. One budgeted item for all their sport needs and they look at the rest of their wallet for other entertainment services”

As at September 30 this year, there were 430,000 Kayo users.  364,000 of whom were paying.  Fast forward to November 5th and the paying subscriber numbers jumped to 402,000.  Big dollars every month.

Which begs the question, how does that sit with the big bosses at News Limited with Foxtel’s Average Revenue per user up around the $70 mark, isn’t Kayo a threat? 

Ogrin says the business is taking a co-ordinated approach to the market “Foxtel does a very good job of managing 30% of Australian households, The other 70% will now consider streaming as their first choice”.

Which is also where the upcoming drama streaming platform fits in.  Like Kayo, this new, yet to be named or formally announced platform will have its own name, own brand, and use Foxtel content to grow overall subscriber numbers. 

Julian Ogrin says the “Stream Motion” business, or platform – that has been built for Kayo will be the foundation of that service too ”What we’ve got here is the kayo platform, being the stream motion platform, is designed with all the services from building awareness to signing up customers and managing your account.”

Confirming to EFTM that the service will be run out of the same business team as Kayo “Yes we will bring a new vertical into entertainment and that will be run through the stream motion team and platform”

Recent model Samsung TV owners will be pleased to hear that Kayo is also coming to their TVs.  Ogrin saying “We hear our customers on social ever day. It was interesting we heard the feedback from them when we launched around Chromecast and we provided earlier versions of that so we supported that.  And then they say thank you very much, when is Android TV coming, and then we worked on Android TV and that came out, and then it was when is Samsung coming”

“So we are listening to customers all the time, in all of our product releases it’s about keeping that feedback loop, Samsung is a great example, they have a lot of tv market share in Australia”. We expect the Samsung App to launch in early 2020.

Over the course of the year, Kayo had 57 different sports, over 200 different series.

Their editorial team produced over 1000 Kayo “Minis”. 

The most-watched AFL games were 

1. Richmond v Geelong (Preliminary Final);
2. Richmond v West Coast (Round 22);
3. Brisbane v Geelong (Round 22).

The most-watched NRL games were

1. Wests Tigers v Sharks (Round 25);
2. Roosters v Storm – (Preliminary Final);
3. Sea Eagles v Storm (Round 24).

And for some inexplicable reason, 27,000 people watched “Nathan’s Hotdog Eating Contest”, with a similar number watching Chess Boxing.  Go Figure.

The figures for my Daniel Ricciardo interview were so good I don’t want to put Nathan’s Hotdogs to shame by publishing them.  But, we’ll be back next year I’m sure:)