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Roy Morgan Streaming Research Questioned, Where Is Binge & Kayo?

Stan is rubbing their hands with glee after Roy Morgan Research gave them a big market share lift claiming that their viewers grew 729,000 (+19.7%).

What’s not been explained is how the Victorian research Company managed to do 50,000 face to face interviews during the past three months of the COVID 19 epidemic and when a large chunk of Australians here home bound.

Insiders are telling ChannelNews that Stan numbers are a lot less than what and that the Binge movie and TV streaming service and the now popular Kayo sports app which is recording major growth appears to have not been taken into consideration or simply dumped into Foxtel numbers, despite being in the market for two months of the recent survey.

The CEO of Roy Morgan research Michelle Levine said “Subscription TV services have made large gains during lockdown with big increases in viewers for Netflix (+1,078,000 viewers), Foxtel (+658,000), Stan (+729,000), Disney+ (+689,000) and Amazon Prime Video (+678,000) in the three months to May 2020 compared with the three months pre-lockdown.

Roy Morgan whose numbers we questioned last year when they claimed that Chinese smartphone brands Oppo and Huawei as well as the now defunct smartphone brand HTC were ahead of Alcatel who carriers and retailers revealed at the time was clearly #3 in the Australian market.

When the Roy Morgan research for smartphones was conducted last year, HTC had been out of the market for more than 18 months and the Telstra smartphones which were in third place were branded Alcatel.

The big issue is how the Victorian based Roy Morgan collects data.

For their latest content streaming research, the Melbourne based Company claims that new data comes from the Roy Morgan Single Source, Australia’s most comprehensive consumer survey, derived from in-depth face-to-face interviews with over 50,000 Australians.

During the past 12 months Stan has lost a large amount of content including Disney and HBO, they also face losing their ShowTime content with the Ten network owned CBSViacom set to launch their own streaming service next year.

In their press release there was no mention of Binge or Kayo which ChannelNews understands is currently ‘booming’ due in part to sport viewing being up on Kayo during the past two months of the Roy Morgan research period due to the return of AFL and NRL football to the network.

According to Foxtel CEO Patrick Delany Foxtel, Kayo and Binge are witnessing significant growth.

He also said that the churn rate for Foxtel is significantly down and that consumers are returning to the network after initially cancelling their subscription when COVID-19 first became an issue.

Roy Morgan claim that all the major subscription TV services have been big winners out of the lockdown with big increases in viewers for Netflix, Foxtel, Stan, Disney+ and Amazon Prime in the three months to May 2020 compared to the prior three month period to February 2020 (pre COVID-19 lockdown).

Netflix remains by far the nation’s most watched subscription television service, with 13.28 million viewers, an increase of over 1 million in only three months (+8.8%). By way of comparison, in the year to February 2020 Netflix increased their viewer numbers by 942,000.

Foxtel has also experienced its best growth for many years with over 5.5 million viewers, up 658,000 (+13.6%) since the pre-COVID-19 period.

Roy Morgan said that newcomer Disney+ which was up 689,000 (+38.2%) and Amazon Prime Video now with 2,166,000 viewers – an increase of 678,000 (+45.5%) since February.

Almost 15.74 million Australians have access to a subscription TV service, up 878,000 (+5.9%) in only three months.

Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says the lockdown in recent months has been challenging for many businesses, but subscription TV has been a big winner with Australians stuck at home.

“After a bumper few month, the challenge now becomes retaining these new customers in the period ahead as Australia gradually re-opens – although Victorians still have some time to wait on that front. Foxtel launched Binge, its competitively priced alternative to Netflix and Stan, at the end of May and this new offering will be a key part of Foxtel’s strategy to attract new viewers in the months and years ahead.”

Both Kayo and Binge operate via a separate Company to Foxtel with most consumers not aware of this.

What’s not known is whether Binge and Kayo have been dumped into Foxtel results by Roy Morgan who appear to treat these separate streaming entities being owned by Foxtel when in fact they are primarily owned by News Corp via StreamMotion Pty Ltd.



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