It’s been a horrid 12 months for local streaming provider Stan.
Despite enjoying 19.7% subscription growth in the year to May 2020, taking its total subscriber base to over 4.4 million, Stan’s future has been placed in jeopardy after being stripped bare of exclusive content.
The trouble began in November last year when Stan lost exclusive Marvel content when Disney Plus launched in Australia.
Then in May, Stan lost its bid against Foxtel for exclusive streaming rights to Warner Bros, WarnerMedia, HBO and HBO Max content. As a result, Stan lost various WarnerMedia programs from its platform, as well as handed Foxtel a competitive advantage in the cut throat subscription television market.
To add further insult to injury, Stan in June lost an exclusive deal with ViacomCBS to stream Showtime content. Accordingly, Stan must de-list around 500 hours worth of content from its service at the end of this year, thinning its content catalogue even further.
The upshot is that while Foxtel has been reinvigorated by new content deals and its new Binge streaming service, Stan finds itself badly out of position in Australia’s increasingly crowded streaming market and facing an uncertain future.
Suffering from a pending dearth of exclusive content once the Showtime deal expires, Stan has been forced to pivot into producing local content in a bid to differential itself from its peers.
Stan has announced plans to commission at least 30 new productions annually over the next five years – a move that media commentators say is vital to give Stan a point of difference over rival streaming services:
For months, industry analysts have been saying it’s only a matter of time before the crowded market gets too much and some providers start to suffocate.
Many picked Stan as that weak link – it was losing content deals left, right and centre as international heavyweights muscled in on Australian devices.
But now, Stan is using its unique edge to make a mark in the market…
“I think it’s a really smart play by Stan, and really, it’s the only play,” McKnight, of TV Blackbox, told The New Daily…
“This is a strong point of difference,” McKnight continued…
Victoria University screen media senior lecturer Marc C-Scott agrees, and said it was a move that Stan needed to make to stay alive.
“They need a point of difference and you’re based in Australia, so why wouldn’t you want to create content that is local?”.
Stan desperately needs exclusive content to bolster its catalogue and give people a reason to subscribe. Failure to do so threatens its very survival.
I’m a big fan of Stan’s Wolf Creek series. If it can produce shows of that quality, then maybe it has a long-term future. Otherwise, its head will be on the chopping block.
