Involved Media Group’s managing director, Sarah Keith, kindly shared her thoughts with B&T, about Foxtel’s Upfronts.
Allianz Stadium and Kayo Sports jostled for top billing at Foxtel’s impressively staged Upfronts last night.
Flames and fireworks punctuated a confident consumer-first presentation that was strong on sports content, audience numbers and quality drama.
Foxtel set out its standing as a technology-led company with financial strength, with the latter enabling key pillars such as the quality HBO content Euphoriaand Succession alongside premium local content Selling Houses Australia and Gogglebox, and the new drama Strife (in pre-production) with Asher Keddie, demonstrating the continued investment in homegrown talent.
CEO Patrick Delany made a clear point about Foxtel knowing what Australians want, and the longevity of some of its shows speaks for themselves.
While a large technology spends ($23 million) was mentioned, details of what it will deliver for advertisers were less clear. But if it continues to drive consumer take-up, minimise churn and maintain the impressive stat that there is a Foxtel product in 50% of Aussie homes, job done.
To continue the strong sports metaphor of the night, the only poor shot played was the insistence on stressing the benefit of Foxtel’s ad model over others’ “business models” just before introducing the new opportunity to advertise on Binge.
While Foxtel are a world expert on managing an ad supported premium subscription model and will undoubtedly deliver a quality experience on Binge, one questions the needs to strongly criticise others.
Tim Minchin’s song from Upright was an absolute treat of non-sport-related content on an evening where Foxtel want us to remember watchability, connectivity and useability.
