Hoyts, a popular cinema chain in Australia and New Zealand, are set to launch their plans of a Netflix-style expansion, with a spin-off brand entitled Hoyts Stream preparing for launch in ‘early 2013'. The company plan to offer pay-per-view offerings of around 1,500 movie and TV ‘classics’, with a subscription service hinted for release later in 2013. The move will be seen as one which slightly follows Netflix’s model of turning from movie specialists (through DVD and streaming), though being an established brand of cinemas founded in 1926, Hoyts’ move will be a more surprising expansion of range, with the Sydney (Australia)-based company looking to create an impact in a different market in the country.
The main approach to this will probably be to try and cash in on the brand of Hoyts, who record an average of 18 million customers in their cinemas each year, along with 547,000 members of their ‘rewards’ programme, and the 200,000 ‘active users’ of their Redbox-style movie rental kiosk Oovie (soon to be renamed to Hoyts Kiosk to reflect the streaming service). A company statement on the plans read: “Hoyts believes that the proliferation of tablets, other mobile devices and smart televisions, coupled with ubiquitous broadband, will enable it to access consumers directly, leveraging its content relationships, bundling/rewards opportunities, and brand,” the company said in a statement. Hoyts’ chief marketing officer Crispin Tristram added: “We entered into [the] home entertainment and took our time with Oovie. It is now a successful business model and doing very well. Stream is simply an evolution of what we are already doing in the [home entertainment] space. It will take time but we have the scale and reach to make this a very good experience for our customers.” The corporation’s chairman David Kirk summarised: “Australians are growing more and more demanding in how they want their movie experience delivered. The convergence of entertainment and technology is exciting & has inspired us to harness digital platforms so as to provide our customers choice for how they consume filmed entertainment from Hoyts, be it on the big screen, small screen or now any screen. We will be leveraging our theatrical and DVD kiosk business in the pricing constructs.” Aiming to compete with Telstra (who run the 4,000-title strong BigPond Movies platform) and Quickflix, will Hoyts be able to make an impact in bringing movies to the customers, or does their business work best the other way around?
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