Hoyts has cranked up growing competition in Australia’s movie streaming market a notch by announcing the country’s oldest cinema brand will make streaming services available early next year.
The cinema group plans to make new release and classic movies available through a pay-per-view model on multiple devices. Television shows will also be available when the service is switched on.
An unlimited streaming service for movies and TV classics is expected to follow later next year, but Hoyts has shed no light on its content providers.
Hoyts also announced plans on Monday to rebrand its DVD rental kiosk division, known as Oovie, to Hoyts Kiosks from next month. Its cinemas, kiosks and streaming will be grouped in its consumer division.
The Hoyts Rewards loyalty program, which has 547,000 members, is currently only open to Hoyts cinema patrons but streaming will be rewarded for any interaction people have with the film entertainment business.
“What makes us different is the whole end-to-end space,” Hoyts chief marketing officer Crispin Tristram said.
“The activity that you drive through streaming will be creating rewards through cinemas.”
Mr Tristram said despite growth in Oovie, more customers wanted digital services and the technology was there to provide them.
“We’ve spoken to our customers, we’ve made sure the technology is out there [to use],” he said, citing 4G mobile services and the national broadband network rollout as contributing factors to the readiness.
Waiting in the wings, incumbent listed movie and television streaming company Quickflix promptly fired back, announcing that it had added a number of content providers to its line-up including a pay-per-view streaming deal with Walt Disney and Warner Bros Australia.
Independent studios and distributors Madman, Umbrella and Gryphon have also been added to join existing pay-per-view content providers NBC, Sony Pictures and Icon Film.
“It’s no wonder that Hoyts are looking at the home entertainment space [and] it’s not surprising that they’re looking at streaming,”Quickflix chairman Stephen Langsford told The Australian Financial Review.
“They are a big brand, we welcome them. We’re already out of the blocks having quickly rolled out our service.
“What is key is we’re the only genuine player in the space. [We have deep] knowledge of the customers and their online behaviour . . . we’re the online entertainment brand,” he said.
Telsyte analyst Sam Yip said Hoyts’s foray into the $198 million video and music streaming market “was something it had to do to: provide a product where the demand is high”.
“They’ve come in at the right time, it’s not too late or too early.
“We have web-enabled TVs, everyone’s connected in the home and mobile and download limits are increasing,” he said.
Mr Yip added that streaming growth had affected download figures, with music streaming sites such as Spotify growing in popularity. “It’s certainly impacting on overall paid music downloads,” he said. The telecommunication consultancy projected that the media streaming market would be worth $247 million next year.
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