Australian pay-television operator Foxtel has made moves to retain subscribers during the sporting season’s enforced shutdown by providing subscribers with a wider range of entertainment content in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Foxtel will make a raft of entertainment content available until May 31, including access to various children’s, documentary and movie channels, multi-screen access for single accounts and unlimited broadband data for customers with monthly data allowance packages.
Foxtel chief executive Peter Delany said: “We’re all in this together and we want them to know that Foxtel is there for them. These initiatives provide customers with an even better entertainment experience in their homes with more content, access on more screens and more data, all at no extra charge.”
The Foxtel ‘Sports HD Bundle’ is currently priced at A$55 (€29.72/$32.59) per month for a 12-month subscription plan. This also includes access to the ‘Foxtel Plus’ entertainment and drama package.
The broadcaster’s sports streaming subscription arm, Kayo, has been badly hit by the postponement of the Cricket Australia, National Rugby League and A-League soccer seasons.
Kayo was already struggling with subscriber retention with the The Guardian reporting that Kayo had shed 32,000 customers between November 5 and February 5. The business’s wider commercial subscriber base was also thought to have fallen by 58,000 to 2.27 million in January 2020 from 2.33 million in September 2019.
A basic Kayo subscription costs A$25 per month, while a premium subscription, which offers access to three simultaneous streams instead of two, is A$35 per month.
Several pay-television businesses have sought to rally around entertainment content in the wake of postponement.