A few years ago, Foxtel lost the broadcasting rights for the English Premier League to Optus Sports. And now Optus Sports looks set to steal the rights to televise rugby from Foxtel:
Optus is favoured to become the new home of rugby…
Current broadcast partners Fox Sports have not signed RA’s nondisclosure agreements and will not, leaving Optus as the lone digital option…
Knowing Fox Sports is no longer in the mix, having already had a $40 million-a-year offer rejected by RA late last year, insiders expect Optus to come in with a dramatically lower figure given the lack of options…
Losing Rugby to Optus Sports would be another body blow to Foxtel’s beleaguered Kayo Sports, whose subscriber base sat at just over 370,000 as at February 2020, down from more than 402,000 in November 2019. This is less than half the 800,000-plus subscribed to Optus Sports in February.
The importance of securing the rugby broadcasting rights was explained recently by sports commentator Roy Masters:
RA will take to broadcasters a guaranteed package of more than 400 games a season, aware that the game’s predominantly wealthy followers will pay to have access to everything from the British and Irish Lions tests to GPS schoolboy matches, even if they only watch a mere fraction of these games…
Optus Sports has 825,000 subscribers, while Fox’s Kayo service numbers 334,000. Essentially, the RA package is one which Fox won’t want to lose and Optus will want to win.
With Foxtel’s traditional cable television and regular streaming businesses fighting a losing battle against lower-cost video-on-demand (VOD) services like Netflix, Stan and Amazon, Foxtel’s only perceived competitive advantage is in sports via its Kayo offering. However, even here Foxtel is losing the battle to Optus Sports, which will soon become the home of both soccer and rugby.
Slowly but surely, Foxtel is losing the subscription television war to the internet.