Optus has expanded its content offering to mobile customers with an exclusive National Geographic app. The move is part of a broader strategy to grow its postpaid customer base, which in the past year has seen three times more net additions after the telco began using exclusive coverage of the English Premier League as a hook.
The app, which can only be accessed by Optus postpaid customers, allows users to stream on demand National Geographic content without data charges.
It provides video, photography and articles from the world famous documentary media company and is expansion of their content deal with National Geographic channels on Optus TV.
In the past year, Optus has built a strong content offering in sport and entertainment to grow its postpaid customer base, an important area of potential growth for the telco as the broadband market is saturated and prepaid dominated by cut-price vendors.
This includes providing data free access to Netflix, Stan and Optus Yes TV, which has about 345 channels such as MTV, Disney, NickJr, BBC, CNN and others.
Undoubtedly, the biggest play in content has been the launch of Optus Sport and acquiring exclusive rights to the English Premier League for three years, which cost about $60 million per season.
AdNews has scoured over Optus quarterly financial reports to analyse how well this strategy has worked.
In the 2015/16 financial year prior to the EPL, Optus added 101,000 net postpaid customers. In the 2016/17 financial year, which covered the first EPL season, the telco attracted net 292,000 postpaid customers – nearly triple the amount.
Its total mobile customer base iat the end of FY17 was 9.72 million, still well below Telstra's 17.4 million.
Optus' operating revenue declined by 8% to $8.43 billion in the in FY17, but this was affected by regulation that substantially decreased the amount of money telcos can charge for mobile call and SMS termination.
Optus also noted that content costs, including the EPL hit, impacted upon the bottom line.
“Despite heightened competition in the Australian market, Optus’ strategy of delivering customer growth through music, TV and sports content, underpinned by a robust and resilient mobile network, is on track," Optus chief executive Allen Lew said in May.
Optus is applying a long-term lens on content deals and while its initial aim is to take market share of its rivals in the postpaid customer market, a broader goal will be ways to monetise content distribution – a trend that has been happening in the US and abroad for several years.
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