Australia’s only real cable TV provider, Foxtel, will launch its long-speculated streaming service which has gone by the codename ‘Project Ares’ and will now apparently be called ‘Binge’ reports The Financial Review.
The name was used by a former Foxtel channel that was closed last November and replaced by Fox One, but Foxtel reportedly retains the trademark. Brisbane-based ad firm Binge Creative owns the binge.com.au name, but the paper suggests it will soon move to a different url.
A spokesman for the cabler wouldn’t confirm the name, but did tell the outlet: “We’re still on track to launch our entertainment streaming service in the final quarter of the financial year.”
Both Foxtel and current major Australian SVOD player Stan (owned by the Nine Network & Fairfax) are vying for a new long-term deal with Warner’s HBO with bids to be in by the end of April. Foxtel and HBO already have an existing agreement and so it’s expected we won’t hear a launch date until the new agreement is either made or goes to rival Stan.
Foxtel is facing major pressure at present. The COVID-19 pandemic has hurt its sports streaming service Kayo, and like most countries around the world its user base is dwindling as more and more are cutting the cord in favor of streaming services.
Last year Foxtel renegotiated a range of content agreements with the BBC, NBCU, Discovery and CBSViacom on a fixed-cost rather than per-subscriber basis, so a new SVOD service would help it better monetise those contracts.
Foxtel is likely hoping for a better outcome than its previous attempt at an SVOD service, Presto, which launched back in 2015 and quickly crashed and burned – collapsing within two years with another rival Quickflix also dropping away. Stan, launched around the same time, locked down numerous big deals and passed over a million active subscribers by 2018.
