Exclusivity deal sees Stan become Australia’s “home of Showtime”
Local streaming service Stan today announced a landmark deal that will see it become the "official home" of TV series produced by premium U.S. cable network Showtime.
As part of the multi-year arrangement, Stan will have exclusive Australian rights to all new and existing Showtime shows, including the upcoming third season of Twin Peaks. Existing Showtime programming such as House of Lies, Dexter, and Californication will migrate to Stan as permitted when existing licensing arrangements expire.
Billions is the first Showtime show to make it to Stan, with episodes debuting day-and-date with its U.S. run.
CEO Mike Sneesby said Stan was able to make the deal with Showtime because of its successful first year, and announced that the service has almost reached 700,000 gross, paying subscribers.
"We're seeing Australians take to streaming video on demand (SVOD) at a faster rate than any of oversea friends," said Sneesby.
While Sneesby described Netflix as a "great ally" in building awareness of SVOD in Australia, he said Stan is taking a very different approach to its strategy.
"We are 100% focused on the Australian market," Sneesby told CyberShack."As Netflix has said quite publically, their original productions are made for all of their global markets. Their focus on content production needs to be for broad international audiences, whereas we are picking the best shows from the best studios and best networks around the world."
"We're spending the money to buy the shows we know Australians are going to love, and we're topping that up with our own Australian-produced original productions that are going onto the platform. We get an advantage out of that, we can focus on the best shows to bring to Australia. Netflix has a great global business model, but they'll feel very global in the programming they see.”