Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade. Today we explore last night’s Foxtel announcements and a record breaking crash in Nine’s share price.
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Foxtel Upfront: More sport, better tech
So now we have the first proper look at what the new Foxtel will be like. Five months on from the sale to DAZN, last night’s Foxtel Upfront ‘26 event signalled that for the most part, it will be business as usual.
Those of us who trooped across Anzac Bridge to Sydney’s old White Bay Power Station saw a show that (not surprisingly given the new owner) swung the emphasis towards the sport portfolio, with less focus on the Binge side of the entertainment portfolio.
So far, more has stayed the same than has changed. Kayo, not DAZN, will remain the sports streaming brand, for now at least.
Despite losing its HBO content when Warner Brother Discovery launched Max, Binge remains - now leaning on NBC Universal for content. The Paper, the spinoff from The Office, started streaming last week. Ahead of the event, CEO Patrick Delany told me: “It’s held its own and it’s far more profitable without the extraordinary cost of Warner Brothers in it.”
Delany wasn’t at last night’s event, instead flying to London for a DAZN board meeting; he sent a video message. His absence wasn’t particularly jarring. The Foxtel Upfronts have always been more the domain of the boss of the Foxtel Media sales house, Mark Frain.
As well as Delany, we also spoke to Frain ahead of the event. Highlights from both those conversations accompany this post as a podcast.
Although the emphasis was on sport - with perhaps two-thirds of the presentation dedicated to that side of the business - there were entertainment recommissions announced too, including Colin from Accounts, High Country, The Great Australian Bakeoff and Selling Homes. And new content included Run, The Postcard Bandit, and Tough Love.
But the direction is towards sport. According to Delany, they’ve never let a rights deal go that they wanted to keep. “We’ve never lost a sports rights content that we didn’t want to lose.” Apart from the English Premier League back in 2015, perhaps.
Soon the platforms will slide across to DAZN’s platform technology. And, says Delany, subscribers to the original Foxtel broadcast service will eventually see their streaming service Foxtel Go move across too. (As a grumpy subscriber, that can’t come too soon for me.)
Not that the company will be investing any more in the Foxtel hardware. IQ4 and IQ5 boxes will be refurbished or retired. There will be no IQ6.
The other piece of hardware that will quickly fade from view is Hubbl. Delany confirmed in the interview that the push is over 18 months after it began. Hubbl is, as he puts it, “in maintenance mode”. That’s not quite send to the farm, but close. Given that the company sold more than 100,000 units (Delany revealed it’s “not tens of thousands” - they can’t just turn off the tap. So technical support for Hubbl will presumably remain for some time.
And Frain’s push to create a new centre of gravity for the screen industry away from free to air continues to edge forward with the Video Futures Collection becoming an organisation in its own right.
Director of customer engagement Toby Dewar told the room: “All of this has brought us to a key milestone for the VFC. We are becoming an independent industry backed body. What started two years ago as an informal think tank led by Foxtel Media, it's now becoming something bigger.
“With structure, governance and a simple mandate to go faster, to go broader, and to ensure we keep the customer at the center of how we push forward with the streaming revolution.”
There was no announcement last night of one of the free to air players joining the VFC, which Foxtel has been pushing for. But Dewar did announce, slightly vaguely: “I'm excited to say that along with Seven, Nine and Paramount, we are exploring ways to collaborate and focus on shared research projects to better understand the outcomes across screens.”
Other announcements included a move into gaming via a tie-up with Livewire; a push into retail media and a new brand-funded content arm with (I thought rather clever) name of Narratv. Is branded entertainment back?
Declaration of interest: Foxtel provided me with accommodation and covered some of my travel to the event
Nine share price drops by a third after Domain exit
Nine’s share price went through a record 35.9% wipeout on Thursday, taking almost $1bn off its market capitalisation.
However the change was expected, as the market revalued the stock after the sale of Domain to US real estate giant Costar. Yesterday was the date for Nine’s shares to go ex-dividend, which means that anybody who buys Nine shares from now on are not entitled to the special dividend from the Domain sale when it is paid out at the end of the month.
Nine’s new market cap is $1.7bn.
It was also a generally down day elsewhere on the Unmade Index, which monitors the performance of Australia’s listed media and marketing companies.
Seven West Media lost 3.5%, Ooh Media lost 2.6% and Ive group lost 2.2%.
In the lower reaches of the index, Sports Entertainment Group - owner of SEN Radio - lost 7.3% while research house Pureprofile lost 6.7%. Vinyl Group gained 15%.
Thanks to Nine’s big drop, the Unmade Index also saw the biggest one-day fall in its history, losing 20.3% to land on 464.2 points.
Time to leave you to your Friday.
I’ll be back tomorrow with Best of the Week. I’ve been thinking about the Lachlan succession, and last night’s news of a potential Paramount takeover of WBD.
Have a great day
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
