If you aren't following @kayosports closely and work in the sports media space, you're missing possibly the biggest success story in sports #OTT. At #SPAsia we heard from their CEO as to how they've done it
Here's my key notes/ takeaways:

1) What is Kayo Sports? KAYO is OTT dedicated sports broadcaster. Foxtel is the largest rights owner in Australia and KAYO Sports is run by streamotion, which is a subsidiary of Foxtel. They tap into the rights Foxtel owns, which allowed them to go to market with immediate scale

2) They launched Kayo as they saw a gap in the market as growth in OTT consumption was rapidly on the rise across Australian households.
And they were right, as since their launch a little over 2 years ago, households streaming entertainment at home went from 55% to 70%

3) Julian highlighted how they coin the phrase 'the netflix of sports', with over 50 sports housed in the platform, again courtesy of their huge rights portfolio via foxtel.

4) For them it's as much about the 'wow factor' experience OTT can deliver as it is it's library of content and interactive/ immersive experiences. They want the experience to be so good people talk to their mates about it'.

5) They now have over 600,000 subscribers, paying up to $25 per month (about the same price as a single PPV premier league match right now :) ).
For scale that's 600,000 out of a total market size of 10.1m Households.

6) Julian outlined 4 key learnings they've taken through COVID and the launch journey:
Learning 1 - How and when people subscribe. They really dial up marketing activity 24 hours before, then scale up further 4-6 hours before. Users jump on typically 5 minutes before kick off

Learning 2: The importance of curating their own content with a focus on immediacy and short form. i.e. they rolled out 'Kayo Mini's - i.e. Instant highlights packages of 15 minutes available immediately after, which were a huge success given time zone challenges with Intl sports

Learning 3: Customer Behaviour. It's been less about churn, more about pausing, and how you get them to reactivate them. Typically a week or 2 before the seasons start they come back.
Most customers 'pay and stay', but those that 'come and go'- they talk to very differently.

Learning 4: Being data driven. They've created a state of the art customer data platform to manage this.
This gives them multiple data inputs that allows them to understand the customer and customers behaviour.
They use 'loads of automations' to communicate in a relevant way

7) How did COVID impact? Focussed more on programming. Picked up loads of classic games, and got current commentator teams to commentate the games again.
Also: Sports based esports competitions and commissioned 170+ Kayo Minis to fill out progamming schedule

8) YOY consumption grew 150% even with Covid thrown in the mix.
9) Aiming to be the number 1 sports brand in Australia. Doing that by 'delivering wow factor and driving word of mouth'. Also they are targeting the parents even if the kids may be the main users

10) One of the worlds leading latency. Their latency is between 7-10 seconds.
11) Available on all tier 1 OTT devices, and now focussing on being available on all tier 2

12) Model is built on subscriptions, but also offering PPV with traditional fight sports offerings
13) Exploring going in front of the paywall. They will be adding sports news and shows for free and partnering with Rugby Australia for some of their content to be free.

14) Working on discoverability and profiling lower tier sports alongside the premium content that drives subscriptions. 'We're selling convenience!'
15) Whether sports should go D2C-sports will be better off partnering with us as we're THE '1 stop shop'.

16) They 'don't have any detailed plans for expansion'. A lot of growth left in Australia first before looking overseas
17) Social watching/ Watch together as an offering. Is hugely important, but a challenge to protect the rights. Needs careful consideration and thinking.

END