3D chess: This is how Nine could buy Foxtel
3D chess: This is how Nine could buy Foxtel
Welcome to a Tuesday update from Unmade. Today: Gaming out a way for Nine to buy Foxtel. Plus, more news on October’s REmade retail media conference.
Today’s full post in for our paying members only.
If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, this is the perfect time. Your membership includes:
Member-only pricing for our HumAIn and REmade (October 1) conferences;
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Member-only content and our paywalled archives;
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More in store at REmade
REmade curator Cat McGinn writes:
We’re delighted to announce a new session for our retail media conference, REmade, which returns as a full-day event in Sydney on October 1.
This year's program is designed to empower marketers at every stage of their retail media journey, providing actionable insights and strategies to thrive in this rapidly evolving landscape.
The session we are announcing today features Officeworks, Coca-Cola, Zitcha and Broadsign. It explore the role of in-store in the retail media chain, the potential of in-store digitisation and sophisticated asset deployment to create engagement beyond the end-of-aisle displays. The speakers are:
Anna Mcloughlin - Head of Digital, Market Activation at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners
Sophie Smith, Head Of Marketing, Officeworks
Troy Townsend, Co-Founder and CEO, Zitcha
Remi Roques, General Manager, Broadsign
Previously announced sessions include global retail media expert Colin Lewis on the intersection of trade marketing and retail media, a deep dive into shifts in customer behaviour, and a panel discussion on mastering omnichannel strategies. Other sessions will focus on the standardisation of measurement, key metrics, loyalty, data privacy and the future of retail media.
The emerging program can be viewed on the REmade website, Discounted earlybird tickets are available for another seven days.
Nine’s route to buying Foxtel (and selling Domain)
Although this piece is about how Nine can find a way of buying Foxtel, to get to that point we need to start somewhere else.
At 6.53pm on Sunday, somebody at Nine threw a grenade at their own side. It was the kind of thing that doesn’t happen by accident.
The Australian Financial Review published an article hinting that Nine’s majority owned real estate platform Domain, is being badly run. Comparing Domain to the News Corp owned REA Group, the Nine-owned newspaper pointed out that Domain has lost 10.8% of its market capitalisation so far this year, while REA has gained more than 10%.
The article was then published in Monday’s print edition.
It was unusual timing. While REA has reported its full year financials, Domain isn’t due to do so until this Friday. If this was routine reporting, that would be the moment.
And if you were to suddenly start critiquing board managements on short term share price moves, Nine’s share price has sunk by 30% in the same period while News Corp is up by 16%. Pot. Kettle.
And, anyway, it’s difficult to make direct comparisons between the Australia-focused Domain and REA Group, which has big international interests. The’s why we include Domain (market cap: $2bn) but not REA (market cap: $27bn) in our local Unmade Index of listed media and marketing stocks.
The target began to emerge further into the article - Domain chairman, and former Nine board member, Nick Falloon. “Former Nine Chairman Peter Costello was no fan of Domain’s performance – or chairman Nick Falloon – but nothing was done.”
The article goes on to point out Falloon’s age (66, according to the piece).
Domain’s CEO Jason Pellegrino also comes under fire as having “failed to move the needle at Domain despite spending some $340m on new acquisitions in the past three years” (later the digital version was amended to read $264m).
If you were in any doubt that this article is more than routine reporting, it’s the only one in the AFR’s media and marketing section where the paywall has been lifted so it’s accessible to all. Perhaps the powers that be want to make sure the piece is seen.
Who the powers that be actually are is another question. The AFR’s previous editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury officially finished on Friday. His successor James Chessell did not return to the company until Monday. Which adds to the intrigue about how this piece ended up in print. (Independent. Always?)
It’s not fair to mention the name of the reporter, by the way, because I suspect this played out well above his pay grade. Media is a shitty beat to cover if you haven’t got air cover from your bosses to play it straight.
At the very least, it looks like an attempt by players within Nine to put pressure on Falloon to call an end to his time as chair. Falloon has had the role since Fairfax Media floated Domain back in 2017.
From the time Nine took over Fairfax and the company boards merged, it was a divided one.
So why now? Perhaps Falloon might get in the way of what comes next.