In Australia, sports may be the key to streaming growth

Nothing draws an Australian audience like live sports.

That was clear Tuesday when Australian media company Seven West Media Ltd. released its financial results for the second half of 2024. The company snapped up digital rights last year for Australia’s biggest summer and winter sports (cricket and the AFL, respectively), and its broadcast-video-on-demand offering has been reaping the benefits.

While total TV revenue for the Seven network was down 6% — which the company attributed to an ongoing “soft” market (-5.4%) and the Olympics broadcast on rival network Nine — it increased total TV revenue share to 41.5% (+0.5 point) during the half year, no small feat for a non-Olympics broadcaster.

Contributing to this was the success of its streaming platform 7plus, which includes a range of niche free ad-supported TV channels such as 7plus Sport. The total streaming audience grew by 36% year over year, with video on demand up 24% and livestreaming up 49%. The platform attracted 347,000 new users to its exclusive coverage of Australia’s summer of cricket and boosted ad revenue by 23% in the quarter ending with December.

Cricket’s power play

Arguably, the real measure of success for 7plus will be its ability to convert this surge in new users into daily viewers. Seven West Media reported that roughly 60% of the platform’s new users consumed multiple kinds of 7plus content over the summer, but whether it can retain them over the long term remains to be seen.

Streamers in the subscription-video-on-demand space (like Peacock and Paramount+) have already proven successful in this regard, having demonstrated lasting U.S. subscriber gains from exclusive NFL coverage. According to recent data from Ampere Analysis, Peacock retained almost 60% of the 2.5 million subscribers who signed up to watch the Miami Dolphins versus the Kansas City Chiefs in January 2024 for at least a year. Similarly, Paramount+ retained roughly 50% of the 3.7 million viewers who signed up to watch the Super Bowl a month later for at least three months.

Aiming for a high level of audience retention, particularly in the lucrative 18- to 54-year-old demographic that formed 70% of its new users, Seven West Media CEO Jeff Howard says, “Seven’s premium sport and video-on-demand content is creating a step change to drive high-value audiences and capture a bigger share of the growing digital advertising pie. We are launching new premium content to grow younger, high-value audiences.”

The streaming game

Based on Australia’s 2024 viewing figures alone, live sports accounted for 8 of the 10 most-watched programs in the country — all of them free to air but increasingly watched on legacy networks’ streaming platforms like 7plus and 9Now.

If Emarketer’s recent forecast of live-sports viewing in the U.S. is anything to go by — and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be — digital viewership in Australia is only set to accelerate. Combined with live sports’ potential to boost and then sustain large audiences, this much is true: The streaming platform that holds the digital rights will be the one that wins.