Australia is now well and truly into winter sports season and fan appetite is at its peak. Earlier this year, the KFC Big Bash League clocked in more than 558 minutes on Kayo Sports making it the most streamed BBL series of all time. In April, the 2nd annual AFL - Australian Football League Gather Round broke all time AFL streaming records across Kayo Sports, with a record of 252 million minutes viewed. This made it the #1 streamed AFL round of all time.

The week prior was Kayo Sports’ #1 weekend of all time, with 654 million minutes streamed across AFL, NRL, F1 and Supercars.

The opening and first round of the AFL season also saw a huge combined 415 million minutes of streaming consumed across Fox Sports and Kayo Sports.

With these record consumption numbers, and the fact that the Foxtel Group is the sole holder of full digital rights for the AFL, it’s no wonder that we’ve had 22 powerhouse brands come on as sponsors for the 2024 NRL season, and 30 for the 2024 AFL season.

Here’s what set sports advertising on the Foxtel Group apart from the rest: 

Exceptional audience strength

With over 1.1 million subscribers, Kayo Sports has a strong, engaged audience that is eager to spend. They have disposable income and they spend more on their passions. They’re active, social, tech savvy, aspirational, and future-focused. And contrary to traditional beliefs that mostly men watch sports, more than one in three (36 per cent) of Kayo’s viewers are female.

In terms of viewing habits, the average Kayo Sports user visits over 8 times every week and watches more than 3 sports each month. Co-viewing is also significantly higher on Kayo Sports. Research has shown that co-viewing boosts ad engagement, with ads eliciting a higher emotional response.

Our FoxTest research has also found that Kayo Sports viewers are 17 times more likely to stay put during ads and 40 times more likely to seek out brands after being exposed to ads.

In a recent Kayo Sports campaign with a popular payments brand, we found that Kayo’s audience is more likely to be professionals in high-value industries who are 1.3 times more engaged when viewing sports on the platform when compared to FTA sport viewing. They also displayed above-norm brand recall, especially among business decision-makers with a 47 per cent uplift in brand familiarity and a 42 per cent uplift in information searching after campaign exposure. Additionally, decision-makers were twice as likely to consider engaging with the brand’s service (112 per cent uplift), with brand share of preference also doubling (101 per cent uplift).

Refined targeting to speak to exactly the right people

An engaged audience is nothing if your brand is talking to the wrong set of people. Foxtel Media offers refined sports targeting for brands via Characters on Foxtel and Kayo Sports.

Foxtel and Kayo Characters offer addressable solutions that connect brands more directly with target customers and minimises audience wastage. Advertisers can speak to different character segments, such as Auto Intenders, Travel Intenders, Beauty Enthusiasts and Grocery Shoppers to gain greater cut-through, even lower down the sales funnel.

Ads can also be tailored to context-match the content being watched, and targeting is much more accurate. Within Kayo Sports, brands also benefit from complete viewer attention with frequency caps and category caps for low clutter and minimal competition.

This is all possible thanks to our wealth of quality first party data. A paying customer ensures higher quality data and with this comes greater confidence in match rates with other data sets and partners. Data for Characters is sourced from not only within our data system (which tracks every click of the remote and every tap of the screen) but is also bolstered with Experian and supported with additional insights from News Corp’s Customer Data Platform. 

This combination of data provides an incredibly detailed picture of viewing behaviour, including an individual viewer’s passion for a particular sports code or team fandom, their entertainment preferences and their purchase intention and behaviour. 

Innovative formats that deliver

With viewing patterns and consumption constantly evolving, Foxtel Media makes it a point to adapt and develop new formats to move with user viewer behaviour. The addition of Hubbl to our suite of services is set to boost audience stickiness and watchability on Kayo Sports.

With 15 global and local apps integrated (and more coming soon), Hubbl fuses the best of Australian sport – paid and free – together into one simple viewing experience. Hubbl makes the viewing experience easy for millions of diehard Australian fans by offering access to live and on-demand games, interviews, documentaries, YouTube channels and content as well as inspired movies and TV shows about particular sports.

Bringing various sports, codes and matches together, side by side, in one experience will drive viewership on Kayo Sports by surfacing relevant content to customer bases, meaning more eyeballs and stickiness.

While Hubbl does not currently offer direct advertising opportunities, Foxtel Media remains committed to providing innovative advertising options. Over time we hope Hubbl will deliver deeper audience insights to help inform strategy and better campaign outcomes for partners.

The Foxtel Group’s sports coverage is designed to be a premium experience for the premium viewer – and this means a premium environment for brands. We constantly test, refine and evolve our offerings to ensure both viewers and advertisers get the best experience. Sport inspires passion and excitement among Australians, and the Foxtel Group provides the ideal way for brands to tap into that.