Nine’s chief sales officer Matt James has confirmed that it is in ongoing with its traditional rivals Network 10 and Seven West Media to pool certain resources to make trading easier and more effective, adding the business case to consolidate inventory and trading processes is strong.
Speaking with B&T ahead of Nine’s Upfront on Wednesday, James pointed out that global streamers and tech platforms with deep pockets are a serious threat to Nine and its traditional rivals alike. Consolidation talks have been happening on-and-off for years, but are now getting serious.
“The industry is at a massive inflection point. I know this has been going on even long before my time around the need for consolidation within the marketplace. Now, more than ever, that has now been recognised,” said James, who succeeded Michael Stephenson as Nine’s chief sales officer on an interim basis that became permanent in April.
“There’s no doubt that the market forces are now putting pressure around what [consolidation] needs to look like. Ultimately, there are a different set of individuals [leading Nine, Seven and Paramount] that I think have a very different perspective on what the industry should be doing.
“Those conversations are very healthy ones with a new set of legacy individuals that actually want to see a consolidated environment. I think hopefully, in the next six months, we’ll start to see some significant steps in terms of what that looks like.”
James accepted there have been a number of false dawns in the past 10 years when it comes to Australia’s free-to-air TV companies consolidating the trading of inventory, but market forces have changed the calculus.
This included an “explosion” of inventory flooding the market from global streamers, “AI federated” trading models and a “lack of government support” for Australian TV broadcasters that have to deal with local content requirements, spectrum fees and tend to pay proportionately more corporate tax.
“Maybe there was a time when never the twain shall meet, but I think we’re way beyond that,” he said.
“Consolidating our businesses for the right reason is fundamentally about being very healthy in regards to local content, what that means for the local economy, and what that means for democracy.”
He told B&T that talks are also taking place with Seven, and there is “some considered urgency about what that looks like” and “who and how we might come together”.
“We’re getting to a point where we want to consolidate both from a technology perspective and from an ease of trading perspective,” James said.
“We have some catch up to do there, but I think we can all come together and do that.”
For a number of years, media buyers have been calling for Australia’s TV companies to pool inventory or at least unify the way inventory is traded.
Even the consolidation of trading within these businesses has been slow. One of Nine’s key announcements at its Upfront event is that it will pool inventory across 9Now, Stan and HBO Max—where Nine is a sales representative. This means that marketers and media buyers will only need one access point to buy advertising across Nine’s portfolio of video assets.
Senior media buyers told B&T that they would support any forms of consolidation that make it easier to trade with Australian TV companies at scale.
Seven and Paramount declined to comment on the matter when reached by B&T.
