The sports streaming platform’s CEO said there was never a business plan that factored in sport actually stopping.
In March 2020, live sports was paused in Australia in response to COVID-19. The winter season had just kicked off two weeks prior and sports streaming platform Kayo had prepared for a six-to-eight-month period of heavy usage and an increase in subscribers. Just like almost every other business, Kayo had to “pivot” to make the most of the new norm. “AFL, NRL, Supercars, Formula One — they are all coming on at the same time, and in the lead up to that, we had grown quite steadily with [customer base] around 450,000. This was going to be the next push with the launch that winter code and really start of the next wave of growth,” Kayo CEO Julian Ogrin explained. “And then, I think it was the 24th of March, it all just stopped. We went from 700 hours of live sport… to absolutely having nothing. I don’t think there was ever a business plan or business case, that factored in sport actually stopping.” Kayo had to instead focus on replays and driving entertainment from its existing catalogue. “That was probably a good learning curve for us as well because we actually had to get out of our comfort zone… one of the things we did learn was that even though live sport wasn’t there, our fans were still wanting to consume something,” he said. As Australia had a decent hold of community COVID transmission, live sport returned, just in a different form with empty stadiums. “That was, for us, a game changer,” Ogrin said. “There’s no way you would ever prepare for a scenario like this.
