Upfront 2023

Thursday October 20th - Allianz Stadium, Sydney

Catch up on the show

Event Wrap

Short on time? Watch our Upfront 2023 event wrapped up in 2 minutes! Keep scrolling for full recordings of each section.

Game Changed

Welcome to the Foxtel Media Upfront 2023. We kick off the show with our first host, Isa Guha, Fox Cricket Presenter, followed by a special message from Sam Neill, star of The Twelve. Then hear from Patrick Delany, CEO, Foxtel Group and Mark Frain, CEO, Foxtel Media on how our business has transformed in response to the evolving media and entertainment landscape – and more importantly, to changing consumer expectations.

Watchability

We’re on a mission to be Australia’s most watchable video network.

With an introduction from Cal Wilson, host of The Great Australian Bake Off, Cate Hefele, Executive Director, Kayo Sports, discusses how we’re changing the game in sport. Amanda Laing, Chief Content & Commercial Officer, Foxtel Group and Alison Hurbert-Burns, Executive Director, BINGE, give a sneak peak of the most watchable content in the market – with a couple of new announcements. We’ll also be joined by Selling Houses Australia hosts Wendy Moore, Andrew Winter and Dennis Scott, plus Strife executive producer and star Asher Keddie.

Daniella Serhan, Entertainment Sales and Partnerships Director, Foxtel Media, rounds out the opportunities for advertisers and why your ads work harder on our network.

Connectivity

Connect with our growing scale and smarts. Join host Isa Guha, Fox Cricket Presenter, as we delve into our connectivity pillar.

Nev Hasan, Executive Director of Agency Sales, Foxtel Media, announces an exciting new opportunity for advertisers on our network – the introduction of advertising on BINGE. And Katherine Frost, Brisbane Sales Director, Foxtel Media shares how our scale and smarts benefits brands.

Useability

The new rules of growth – Watchability and Connectivity - are nothing without the final ingredient: Useability. Useability is about fit-for-purpose service, a testing mindset, and ease of doing business. With an intro from Cal Wilson, new host of The Great Australian Bake Off, Toby Dewar, Director of Customer Engagement, Foxtel Media updates on our Foxtest initiative. And Mark Frain rounds out what we’re doing to optimise the Foxtel Media team’s ability to provide the best service and delivery for you and your clients. Finally, we leave you with a special message from Brian Cox, star of Succession.

Game Changed

The way viewers consume content has changed forever. And with it comes a whole new set of expectations – more options, more content, fewer interruptions and a seamless viewing experience.

In this game, the viewers rule.

Customer-centricity is not new, but, in a market where expectations are shifting as quickly as ours, not passing the customer test is fatal. In 2018, Foxtel began a program of substantial change. Then, we were a traditional pay-TV company. Today we are a technology-led streaming business with new financial strength.

Six years ago, just 8% of our customers were streaming. Today that number is 62%

Foxtel’s streaming products Kayo, Binge and Flash were designed around the passions of Australians.

Our services are premium and international like the global streamers, but ad-friendly and Australian like the free-to-airs. There are affordable subscription options for most household budgets. That’s why there is a Foxtel Group product in every 1 of 2 households in Australia.

The game has changed. Are you in?

We’re making sure our services are desirable for the next generation of audiences, while retaining the audiences that have been loyal to us for a generation already. We’re seeing a market that is moving fast with boundless options for consumers.

The proof is in the numbers. Our retention rate is 85% with minimal cannibalisation between services. Out net promoter score is the highest it’s been in 5 years and churn has declined 11 months in a row.

Today, Foxtel Media, is a digital media brand with 30% revenue from digital, and gross revenue is up 15%.

We play the new rules of the game:

Watchability is better content, a better viewing experience, AND a better advertising experience, for superior brand impact.

Connectivity is the scale and smarts of streaming services that are not bound to the way the old game was played.

And Useability is about a testing mindset, ease of doing business, and great people.

The multiplying power of all three working together is the key to success.

The most watchable sport

We lead the way in sports broadcasting and streaming with Kayo Sports, which boasts over 50 sports on the service. We work hard to enhance the game day experience and ensure fans never miss a moment with the best broadcast technology and a seamless user experience. This, and the careful balance of content-to-advertising ratio - including no ads in live play - has seen the platform go from strength to strength.

2022 was our strongest NRL season yet with streaming audiences up 36%. Formula 1 hit huge heights, with audiences up 33%, while AFL had total increases of nearly 18% season-on-season.

We’ve also seen the power of watchability change Australia’s relationship with women’s sport, where we broadcast over 4,700 hours across 15 codes and 24 competitions. Our recent Foxtest research study on Women’s Sport, which showed that 41% of Australians are more engaged than 5 years ago. Interesting, then, that sponsorship investment is currently only 12% of male equivalent codes, despite average sponsor brand recognition being much higher. That means there’s lots of opportunity for brands willing to change the game with us. To help brands understand how best to invest, we’ve developed a playbook – give us a call and we’d be happy to share.

And, what could be more watchable than one of our biggest cricket seasons ever, with more than 1600 hours of live Cricket to be broadcast this summer

The most watchable entertainment

The Foxtel Group is the home of the best local and international TV shows and movies. We offer subscribers of Foxtel and Binge over 40,000 hours of diverse content including cultural juggernauts like Euphoria and House Of The Dragon.

From our international partners, we’ll debut new shows The Idol, Chivalry, The Last Of Us, Marie Antoinette and The White House Plumbers.

And highly anticipated next seasons of The White Lotus, Succession, And Just Like That, Young Rock, Outlander and Devils will air next year.

Also returning are addictive reality franchises Below Deck, Real Housewives and Bake Off.

Our local LifeStyle and reality content continues to attract large, devoted audiences. The Great Australian Bake Off is back, alongside local favourites Gogglebox Australia, Grand Designs Australia and Selling Houses Australia.

And, the world’s hottest new dating format, FBOY Island, will be available exclusively on Foxtel and BINGE next year.
We also have a crowded slate of new and returning local originals.

Our viewers can expect new original Colin From Accounts, and second seasons of the acclaimed Love Me and Upright.

We are also thrilled to announce a new Foxtel Original – the scripted drama Strife, starring Asher Keddie, produced by Made Up Stories - the team behind The Undoing, Big Little Lies and many more.

How our Watchable platforms drive impact for your brands

Our commitment to a better viewing experience results in a more attentive audience.

A Foxtest initiative we did with Amplified intelligence proves Foxtel delivers 10% more engagement on linear and 30% more engagement on Kayo Sports, compared to non-STV. (source: Amplified Intelligence)

We have fewer ad-breaks, fewer ads and a more engaged audience. The result? In our on-demand environment we’ve seen evidence of 1.5x better spontaneous ad awareness than non-STV, with 80% of that result attributed to lower ad loads.

Source: Nature Foxtel Media IQ Pre-Roll Advertiser research 2022

That’s why every ad is working 50% harder with us.

We’re passionate about being Australia’s most watchable video network...and no one’s as watchable as the Foxtel Group.

Brands grow by reaching enough people and applying data smarts to make sure they’re the right people. Connectivity is our second rule for growth – ensuring your brand can grow, maximise impact and minimise waste.

Across our business, we connect your brands to an audience with scale and a profile you can’t find anywhere else. We work continuously to serve our current and future audiences – the source of growth for your brands. We attract affluent audiences on Foxtel. We have audiences in high-earning brackets on Kayo Sports and BINGE too.

Young families watch Foxtel Group Platforms on multiple devices, while hard-to-reach male audiences can be found on Kayo Sports and Foxtel more than any other streamers.

The largest audience for BINGE is 18-34 women. 80% are under 54.

Soon you will be able to advertise on BINGE

Advertising will be coming to BINGE in early 2023, allowing you to connect to a new, high valuable audience.

We will launch with audience scale built–in, meaning there will be a buyable audience straight out of the gates – no waiting for viewers to accumulate.  We’ll launch with pre and mid rolls in TV content (excluding kids programming) and we’ll have solus break opportunities. Foxtest research showed spontaneous ad recall is up to 34% higher as a solus ad break and brand appeal is up to 4x higher.

There will be no more than 4 minutes of ads per hour with strict ad-serving controls and a frequency cap of one per hour.

With Kayo, we changed the game for Sport. Now BINGE will do the same for Entertainment.

Want to know more? Contact your rep today.

High impact brand moments

Connectivity is also about the genres, shows and story-telling moments that intensify your brand’s narrative. Media context is an essential ingredient to brand distinction.

From Sky News, to BBC, to NBCU and Discovery – content on our platform is unrelentingly good, offering environments that make your brand stories soar.

Sponsorships drive significant uplifts in awareness and consideration, and exposure across multiple touchpoints creates bigger brand impact. For example, with Gogglebox Australia, we see a direct comparison of our impact vs free to air. Foxtel’s audience was 19% more engaged for Dominos and 2x more likely to recall the integration.

Source: Nature Dominos CE Study. 2021

Scale and smarts

Connectivity is not just about connecting your brands to enough people. It’s also connecting them to the right people. It’s scale AND smarts.

In 2023, we’re adding more opportunities to intelligently connect. In partnership with News Corp’s News Connect and Regional Customer Data Platform, we’ll shortly have access to the power and scale of the wider News Corp network. The platform creates an identity graph across Foxtel, News Corp and REA, with transaction, location, and intent data appended from partners like Experian, Flybuys and MasterCard.

The three businesses are working together to bring more smarts to your plans. Initially, this will be on Kayo Sports, our most addressable service.

Useability is about fit-for-purpose service, a testing mindset, and ease of doing business.

Useable partners are multi-dimensional – easy to deal with, willing to try new things, and increasingly, focused on our impact on the environment and society.

Alongside our Reconciliation Action Plan, we’re making inroads on our sustainability strategy, reducing scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 33% over the last two years. We donated nearly $1 million in airtime value to environmental causes in FY22, and we’re on track to reduce our carbon emissions by 60% by 2030.

Foxtest

In our view, learning together is the way to win together. That’s why, last year, we launched Foxtest, committing $3m to explore new frontiers. We tested eight areas, across 25 clients and 10 projects.

Next year we will increase our Foxtest investment from $3m to $5m, across research agency costs, inventory allocation and our resources.

Great people

We remain tenacious about delivering your campaigns: 94% year to date, 97% this financial year to date.

We’re investing in upskilling and unifying our sales team, as well as optimising our back-end infrastructure, to make your experience with us even more seamless.

Are you in?

Our numbers tell a confident story about our progress in the 3 last years … now with 4.5m subscribers. As we head into 2023, it’s time to retire old linear thinking and embrace streaming-first plans…. to play by the new rules of this changed game.

To win today, you need the multiplying power of Watchability, Connectivity and Useability – and we are best placed to provide it to you. We have the market’s most watchable content and advertising experience, which means greater impact for brands.

It’s multiplied by the increasing scale and smarts of our streaming audience.

And it’s multiplied by our incredible team that we believe are some of the best and most trusted players in the game.

So. Are you in?