Research: 14m Australians have pay-TV or SVoD
July 3, 2019
Research from analyst firm Roy Morgan shows 13,975,000 Australians aged 14+ now have access to some form of pay-TV or SVoD service, up 7.9 per cent on a year ago.
Netflix is the clear market leader with nearly 11.5 million Australians now having a Netflix subscription in their household, up by 17.6 per cent on a year ago.
The leading Australian-owned SVoD is the Nine Entertainment Company-owned Stan which is now accessible by nearly 2.9 million Australians, up by 43.2 per cent on a year ago.
Other smaller pay-TV/SVoD services to have grown quickly over the past year include Amazon Prime Video (+130.7 per cent), YouTube Premium (+37 per cent) and Fetch (+20.9 per cent).
The new Foxtel-owned sports streaming service Kayo Sports has also enjoyed swift growth since launching in late 2018 and is now accessible by well over 300,000 after just over six months of operation.
Netflix has made a huge impression around Australia since launching just over four years ago and over 3.6 million people in NSW (55 per cent) and over 2.8 million in Victoria (52 per cent) have access to the service.
Penetration of Netflix is actually higher for people in both Queensland and WA. Now over 2.3 million people in Queensland (57 per cent) and nearly 1.3 million in WA (60 per cent) have access to Netflix – the highest rates of usage of any States.
Access to Stan is at around a quarter the level of Netflix and penetration is highest in South Australia where 266,000 have access to Stan equating to 18 per cent of the population.
Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan, says increasing numbers of Australians are willing to pay for premium TV content as SVoD services such as Netflix, Stan and Amazon Prime Video grab an increasing share of the market.
“Over two-thirds of Australians now have access to pay-TV/SVoD services in their households as strong growth for services including Netflix, Stan, YouTube Premium, Fetch, Amazon Prime Video and new live-sport focused Kayo Sports has continued during 2019.”
“A closer look at the industry leader Netflix, which is now accessible by almost 11.5 million Australians, shows the service has broad appeal across differing psychographic segmentations. The differences between the newer Netflix service, and the traditional Foxtel pay-TV service, are illustrated succinctly by Roy Morgan’s Helix Persona Communities.”
Helix Personas is a consumer segmentation and data integration tool that combines sophisticated psychographic and behavioural data to classify the Australian population into 54 Personas and six Communities. Helix Personas uses a combination of Roy Morgan Single Source data and third party data sources.
“A majority of all six Helix Persona Communities are able to access Netflix ranging from 60 per cent of Australians in 100 Leading Lifestyles through to 50 per cent of those in 600 Fair Go,” continued Levine.
“However an analysis of Australians with Foxtel shows well over half are concentrated in the more family-centred Helix communities. Over a quarter of 100 Leading Lifestyles (27 per cent) and 400 Hearth and Home (27 per cent) have access to Foxtel compared to under a fifth of the affluent young 200 Metrotechs (16 per cent) and the lower income 600 Fair Go (18 per cent).”
“The results indicate that the low monthly prices for the new Subscription TV services led by Netflix are driving take-up across traditional demographic boundaries while the higher cost of a full-bundle service from Foxtel is generally favoured more by larger family units.”
“The competitive nature of the market is underlined when one considers there are powerful new players’ entering the global streaming video market such as Apple TV+ and Disney Plus looking to leverage off their existing user base of installed devices (Apple TV+) and TV/movie catalogues (Disney Plus) respectively.”
“Netflix has undoubtedly been a star performer since launching in Australia just over four years ago in a market with a proliferating array of choices for the consumer it will be more important than ever for existing and new streaming services to correctly identify which genres will appeal to the widest possible audiences.”
“Roy Morgan explored the genres preferred by Australians earlier this year which showed News and Reality TV are the most popular genres although there are significant differences depending upon which demographic segments are highlighted.”