Great article in the AFR today. Formatting is a bit off, but...

Great article in the AFR today. Formatting is a bit off, but article below:

Nearly 20 million Australians have tuned into the Seven Network to watch the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, with Seven using the event to boost its user data for 7plus.

From the opening ceremony to day 11 of the Games, 19.95 million Australians watched Seven’s coverage of the Games, according to data from VOS, which combines OzTAM, which captures metro traditional TV audiences, and Regional TAM, which measures audiences in the regions, with broadcast video on demand (BVOD).

Seven has used its coverage of the Olympics to boost its 7plus user base to more than 9 million. Seven

While it is difficult to compare Olympics ratings with previous Games due to differences in time zones, the average full-day broadcast audience, across the first 14 days of the Games, is up 59 per cent in the capital cities compared with the Rio 2016 Olympics, and up 50 per cent nationally.

From the opening ceremony to the final session on Saturday, Australians have watched more than 4.6 billion minutes of Olympics coverage on 7plus, making it the biggest digital event in Australian TV history.

The opening ceremony was the most-watched TV program of the year, with a total audience of 3.85 million viewers nationally, including those who watched on BVOD or viewed the event on catch-up.

The most-watched event of the Games was the men’s 100 metres semi-final on day nine, with 3.106 million Australians watching, while Peter Bol’s 400 metres final was watched by 3.048 million.

The most watched Australian gold medal win was the women’s 4x100m medley relay final in the swimming, which saw the Australian team of Kaylee McKeown, Chelsea Hodges, Emma McKeon and Cate Campbell take the gold, ahead of the US and Canada.

Rapid growth in user base

While the Olympics are often run at a loss for commercial TV networks due to the costs associated with airing the event, for Seven a key outcome of the Games was growing its 7plus user base.

Seven West Media chief executive James Warburton set a target of 10 million users, starting with an existing base of 6.4 million.

User login became mandatory in the weeks leading up to the Olympics, so those who wanted to watch had to provide details such as email address, a first and last name, year of birth, postcode and gender in exchange for accessing the Olympics content online.

As of Saturday, Seven had amassed a total of 9.172 million registered users, representing 43 per cent growth through the Olympic period.

“That’s an incredible amount of new people to bring into the platform over a short period of time and just demonstrates the power of the Olympics and the success of our strategy,” said Seven West Media chief digital officer Gereurd Roberts.

“In terms of what we do with them, retention is the primary focus now. The majority of the new users, particularly in the early days, were males. In the past, given the nature of the content, [7plus] was relatively female skewed. We need to work to retain the new users.”

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Olympics drives Seven television success

The growth is especially important to Seven, considering it wrote down the value of Olympics broadcast rights a number of times since spending almost $200 million in 2014 to secure the rights to the 2016 Rio Games, the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Seven last wrote the value down in February 2020, stating in the half-year financial results: “The Group has recognised an onerous contract provision in relation to a number of specific non-cancellable purchase contracts for television programs and sporting broadcast rights. The majority of the provision relates to legacy output deals for US content and the Tokyo Olympics. The onerous losses arise over the next six years aligned with the expected broadcast date of the programs and events.”

For Seven, as it moves into the Paralympics and looks to the Winter Olympics due to be held in Beijing next February, the success of 7plus demonstrates the importance of providing viewing options to audiences.

“People want to watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it ... they want to watch live stream, they also want to watch in short form, like give me a three-minute update, and they want to watch a full replay. If you can provide the full suite of optionality, that is a good thing,” said Seven West Media chief revenue officer and Olympics director Kurt Burnette.

“What we’ve also learned is you have to be very clear about what it is that you’re providing people.”

Mr Burnette said it was important to educate audiences on what 7plus is, what it does, and the value it offers them, especially with the introduction of a mandatory login.

“People still want to know that they’re getting something to give that value back, which is their information,” he said.

Seven also closely watched as audiences came into the 7plus environment to see how it could best keep them in the environment, launching male-focused pop-up channels as the audience on 7plus began to skew to more men.

“If you actively act on the insight you’re seeing, people will actually engage with the product,” Mr Burnette said.

He said Seven has seen “great benefits” for housing the Olympics content inside 7plus, as opposed to creating a specific app for the Games as it did in the case of Rio.

Network audience share

Seven has also benefited from a boost to its traditional TV ratings, due to the Olympics, ending the week with a 62.7 per cent network audience share, more than three times higher than its closest rival network.

Seven has won 18 of the 32 weeks this year and 13 of the 24 weeks of ratings survey year 2021. However, the Olympics are excluded from the OzTam full-year ratings results.

On the commercial side, Mr Burnette said the Olympics will set the company up for “a very strong financial FY22”.

“We’re well ahead of forecasts of where we thought we would be and every single brand that was involved with the Olympics has, if not met, exceeded what was in their forecast that we forecast with them. The clients are very happy, they’re getting fantastic results,” he said.

While Seven has faced some criticisms for its ad placement during the Games, Mr Burnett said when a media company is delivering a high number of sports, each with its own passionate fan base, it cannot cater to everyone.

“It’s a value exchange ... the value exchange is the ads. We try to get it right. We definitely don’t like to miss things ... this is a very complex, highly technical, multi-platform delivery – that’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. We try to keep everyone happy, but it’s just not possible to keep everyone happy all the time,” he said.

“We tried to take on as much of the the constructive feedback that we get, and do use constructive feedback. But you’ve got to try to block the noise out on other things.”