Billionaire Kerry Stokes is building a local sports streaming company
One of Australia’s biggest media companies, Kerry Stokes′ Seven West Media, is getting into local sports broadcasting, aiming to show the country’s local club-level games on a new platform called Streamer.
Created by its West Australia Newspapers arm and quietly rolled out locally over the past year, Streamer already hosts the state’s curling league, and over 45s soccer competition and netball games between Catholic schools. It was launched in early September by Mr Stokes and mining giant BHP’s president, Geraldine Slattery.
Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes launched Streamer alongside BHP president Geraldine Slattery.
On Wednesday evening at South by Southwest in Sydney, an east coast rollout of Streamer was a part of Seven’s annual upfront presentation to the country’s big advertisers.
“It’s been very, very effective in Western Australia, and it’s really about its organic growth,” Seven chief executive James Warburton said.
The goal is to have local clubs film and stream their own games on the site, which Seven can then monetise through advertising. Leagues, clubs and players can create profiles, upload games and cut highlights. It has grown from hosting 76 clubs to 265 over the past year.
Key to Streamer is scale, as well as leveraging Seven’s news and wider TV platform to promote it. A similar play, called Cluch TV, went into administration in the past few weeks, and Mr Warburton was quick to say it’s not a big bet: “There are small costs around the platform, and we’ve got a pretty robust sponsor in terms of BHP,” he said.
Seven West Media boss James Warburton.
“It’s not something that we’re going to spend a lot of money on, or lots of marketing resources on, but we do have the ability to promote it through
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