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Nine Entertainment has officially announced that it will be partnering with Fairfax for its upcoming video-on-demand service, StreamCo.
Nine has said that it expects the service to launch within the 2015 financial year. It will be a fixed-fee monthly subscription with no minimum term — similar to what is being offered by Presto. However, while Presto is for movies only, StreamCo will offer “a substantial catalogue spanning TV series, movies, kids and family programming, and documentaries from a wide range of leading Australia and international studios”.
StreamCo will offer video streaming via TV, PC and mobile devices.
Fairfax and Nine will both commit AU$50m over a “multi-year period”, although this figure does include marketing and advertising costs. In addition to the cash, Nine says that Fairfax will bring experience in “subscription services and digital products”.
Nine Entertainment recently bought out HBO’s 8 percent share of Quickflix, fuelling speculation that the launch of StreamCo might be imminent. At the time Nine told CNET that the Quickflix buy was a “small, opportunistic financial investment”.
StreamCo will join an increasingly crowded streaming market in Australia, with Dendy recently launching Dendy Direct and the promise of an Australian Netflix launch looming like Banquo’s ghost.
Graham Taylor, co-CEO of film distributor and production company Village Roadshow, said Netflix was primed for a 2015 launch, telling CNET back in June that it was “pretty widely known that Netflix is opening operation in Australia next year”.
The Daily Mail has speculated that as many as 200,000 Australians currently pay for Netflix, using a VPN to gain access to the geoblocked service.
