{"id":500255,"date":"2026-02-24T04:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T04:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500255\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T04:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T04:48:10","slug":"nines-new-world-less-ads-more-subs-and-plenty-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/500255\/","title":{"rendered":"Nine’s new world: Less ads, more subs and plenty of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine\u2019s half yearly financial results<\/a> show a business undergoing a seismic shift, with total TV revenue down, subscription revenue up and fierce ongoing cost cutting. There was also the tantalising hint of AI licensing deals providing future revenue streams.<\/p>\n

The business posted an EBITDA increase of 6% year-on-year for the second half of 2025. Total TV revenue (free-to-air and on-demand) was down 14%, on the back of the poor ad market and in comparison to a period that included the Olympics the year before. That dragged down group revenue (-5%).<\/p>\n

Nine CEO Matt Stanton said the ad market declined 10% in the same period, and described Total TV\u2019s performance as \u201cpleasingly robust\u201d. He rejected a suggestion BVOD platform 9 Now was struggling, saying he was \u201cvery pleased with the outlook\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The big picture for Nine is one of big change, with the announced acquisition of out-of-home giant QMS and the divestment of Domain, Nine Radio and its regional TV outfits. While Domain numbers were removed from the results, radio and the regionals were still included in the H1 numbers.<\/p>\n

ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

On the publishing side of the business (the newspaper mastheads including the SMH, Age and AFR), digital subscription revenue grew 17% YOY. Within the division, this strong performance was offset by ad decline, leaving the whole more or less flat (revenue down 2%, EBITDA down 1%).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Stanton said the strong growth in subs revenue had mostly been driven by increased average revenue per user (ARPU) rather than subscriber growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a considered pricing and volume approach that we go through,\u201d he said. \u201cThe majority of the growth came through ARPU \u2026 we also think about the paywall, how much do we open the paywall and close the paywall.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new revenue line for Publishing will be content licensing for AI large language models, with Nine\u2019s ASX release noting the \u201clicensing of Nine\u2019s content to other Australian corporations for use in their in-house proprietary LLMs\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Matt Stanton on the call<\/p>\n

Stanton verified that two deals had been done with more on the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t talk about specifics \u2026 we have done a couple of deals,\u201d Stanton said. \u201cIt\u2019s a license deal, to train their own models, to be a stronger model for them, it\u2019s got the SMH, The Age and the AFR, we\u2019ve done two at this point. It\u2019s a good revenue stream for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stanton said that AI tools were being employed internally at Nine in six separate areas. Google\u2019s Gemini is being used for general productivity, with other uses in areas such as product (for example, text-to-speech for written articles) and content creation.<\/p>\n

Through the presentation, Stanton emphasised \u201cpremium content\u201d as the future of the company, while saying it was important not to pay too much. Nine\u2019s existing NRL rights \u2014 its premium content crown jewels \u2014 expire in 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NRL rights are great rights to get, we\u2019ll be very disciplined as we look at them, but it has to stack up,\u201d Stanton said. \u201cPremium rights \u2026 still are good drivers of commercial outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

As in past investor calls, Stanton called on the federal government to quickly implement changes to the News Media Bargaining Code (the News Media Incentive) which Nine and other media have already provided feedback on.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In terms of cost-cutting, Nine is targeting $160m of annual savings by the end of FY27 (June 2027). It achieved $43m of that in the half, $32m of which was ongoing savings, and $25m of which came from TV (not including the big spend on the Olympics).<\/p>\n

Nine CFO Martyn Roberts said $25m TV savings were mostly content \u2014 TV strip shows not bought \u2014 and that the savings slated for the second half of the financial year would include a higher proportion of personnel costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine\u2019s half yearly financial results show a business undergoing a seismic shift, with total TV revenue down, subscription…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,251612,114233,20975,251613,427],"class_list":["post-500255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-martyn-roberts","tag-matt-stanton","tag-nine","tag-nine-entertainment-company","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}