Local Netflix rival gaining momentum in streaming wars

NETFLIX is the streaming king among Australian households by a long way but Aussie rivals are gaining momentum.

Nearly 10 million Aussies have access to a Netflix subscription in their home which amounts to a 30 per cent increase from a year ago.

Those figures are based on research from Roy Morgan that gives a snapshot of the growing subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) market in Australia based on interviews with more than 13,000 Australians over the age of 14 in the past 12 months.

According to their data, more than 13 million Australians have access to some form of pay TV or subscription TV service such as Foxtel, Netflix, Stan or Fetch, up 11.7 per cent on a year ago.

While Foxtel* is the second biggest service behind Netflix, local streaming service Stan is growing at the fasted rate.

According to the Roy Morgan research, over 2 million Australians can now view content on Stan, up 39.2 per cent on a year ago.

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When compared to data released last week by technology analyst firm Telsyte which estimated the number of subscriptions among households, it shows the number of consumers who have access to such services without being the actual account holder is more than double.

Telsyte estimated that Netflix had about 3.9 million Australian subscribers with Stan passing the 1 million mark at the end of June this year.

Most of this would be down to family households and share houses, but also the odd case of dodgy account sharing across households.

“Leading streaming video provider Netflix is fast closing in on 10 million users spread across nearly 3.9 million households,” said Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine.

“9.8 million Australians over the age of 14 used Netflix in the June 2018 quarter which gives Netflix a market penetration of 48 person among Australians aged 14 plus.

“However, although Netflix clearly is well ahead of its rivals, other SVODs are also growing strongly — and generally at a faster rate than even Netflix.”

Stan was a key inducement for Nine in its historic $4.2 billion takeover of Fairfax Media, announced last week as local media providers try to compete with the Netflix juggernaut.

“Stan, the joint venture between new merger partners the Nine Entertainment Company and Fairfax, grew its user base by nearly 40 per cent over the last year to top 2 million users in the June 2018 quarter,” Ms Levine said.

* News Corp Australia, publisher of this website, part owns Foxtel

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