Australia

Updated December 2022

Market brief

Australia adopted streaming services aggressively – nearly 80 percent of households pay for at least one service, likely as a result of pent-up demand tied to the poor value proposition of the monopoly multichannel service Foxtel that led to low (25–30 percent of homes) adoption. Australia has two major single-territory services, Stan and Binge, although both have lower adoption than Netflix and Disney+.

Stan launched in 2014 and is owned by media conglomerate Nine Entertainment, which also owns one of the commercial broadcasters. Nine never had a significant production business, owns minimal IP, and thus there has never been a strong imprint of the commercial broadcaster on Stan, although its revenue has been helpful in offsetting declining linear revenue. Stan mostly offers US and UK-produced movies and series and has commissioned series and movies although most rely heavily on foreign partners for financing. In 2021, Stan added a SAVOD sport tier that requires additional payment.

Binge is a more recent (2020) SVOD option from monopoly multichannel-service provider Foxtel, which also offers Foxtel Now, a much more expensive service. Both offer both on-demand content and linear channels. At a corporate level, Foxtel continues to have a “home of HBO” deal and is the exclusive provider of many HBO titles across its services; HBO Max has not launched in the market but is expected. A few titles have been commissioned exclusively for Binge, but the service also includes the Foxtel commissions which amount to a few hours per year (The End; Love Me; The Twelve). Foxtel also owns a single-territory sport streamer Kayo. Aggressive anti-siphoning rules that have required most major sporting events be available on free-to-air services limited Foxtel’s multichannel service from offering the kind of distinctive value proposition that drove subscribers in other countries and kept its adoption comparatively low relative to peer countries. Sport is a major component of Australian viewing; there are many sports relative to a national population of 25 million and most are particular to the country.

Notably, Stan and Binge are pure SVODs. A separate AVOD sector exists in Australia that is tied closely to services from each of the commercial broadcasters and the public service operators ABC and SBS (ABC’s iView does not have ads or subscriber fees). Most recent market use data finds only 40 percent of Australians use these services (compared with 60 percent for SVOD) and viewers spent less time using them (10 percent versus 36 percent).

Australia has been an early market for many multi-territory services. Ampere has noted Australia as the most Netflix subscribed by penetration, and Disney+ subscription quickly eclipsed Stan for second place. A precursor to Paramount+ (10 All Access) pre-existed Paramount+ due to Viacom’s ownership of commercial broadcast channel Ten (as the case of the UK’s Channel 5). Amazon has substantially increased its retail capacity in Australia since 2018 and, along with Netflix, has arguably had a more aggressive domestic production slate than Stan or Binge (see Lobato, Scarlata, and Cunningham 2023).

Stan and Binge have uncommonly low levels of domestic titles relative to other single territory services. This owes to small size of the market (~10 million homes) which limits series funding. By the early 2020s, half the financing plans for Australian series often came from foreign financers. These financers sought titles that would perform strongly in their markets; a dynamic that explains the very limited “Australianness” of their commissions (The Tourist; Eden; The Gloaming). Much of the Australian back catalog remains inaccessible, although Prime Video offers several titles.

Australia also offers a generous tax incentive program in the form of the “producer offset” that rebates 30 percent (from 2021, 20 percent previously for series) of production spending with minor requirements of inclusion of Australian creatives and shooting in Australia. The incentives have encouraged US runaway production (Young Rock; LaBrea; ClickBait).

Survey data commissioned by the Australian Government reports the following subscriber levels: