Foxtel Media, the sales house for Foxtel Group, has announced a suite of new advertising formats and platform upgrades across Kayo Sports and BINGE, set to launch from early 2026.
Revealed at the Foxtel 2026 upfront event in Sydney, the developments include fresh digital ad opportunities, a major revamp of BINGE, and the debut of Kayo Buddy – an AI-powered personal streaming companion for sports fans.
A focal point of the presentation was the announcement of a partnership that shifts Foxtel into the world of online gaming.
Connecting brands with gaming audiences
Foxtel Media has announced a new multi-year partnership with global gaming marketing company Livewire, aiming to create fresh opportunities for Australian advertisers to reach gaming audiences. The partnership is designed to help brands engage with gamers across platforms such as Roblox through immersive activations and high-impact campaigns.
As part of the arrangement, Foxtel Media’s audience segmentation tool Characters will be integrated into Livewire’s ecosystem. It also includes a data partnership powered by Livewire’s Gamer.ID identity solution, which anonymises and encrypts gamer data collected via SDKs, APIs, and active campaign engagement. The platform complies with GDPR, CCPA, and global privacy regulations, enabling advertisers to target audiences with precision across gaming environments.
Foxtel Media will extend its sports streaming brand into the metaverse with Kayo Sports Stadium on Roblox from February 2026, the experience will feature multi-sport mini-games, co-play options for families, and opportunities to interact with sporting personalities in real time.
In a conversation with Mediaweek, Foxtel Media CEO Mark Frain was bullish on the move, looking at it as inevitable when you consider media consumption behaviour changes: “When you look at it globally, there’s an ongoing convergent collision between sports and entertainment, gaming… sports stars and gaming. You’re just seeing these worlds kind of overlap and cross over. And given where we sit from a sports perspective, we’ve gone: ‘we know there’s an opportunity, how do we play in that sphere?’ And that’s where we kind of kicked off the conversations with Livewire, which have actually been ongoing for quite some time.”
Usually gaming partnerships between traditional media and game platforms have focused around integrating IP into game environments. But with a branded in-game Kayo stadium and a focus on back-end data convergence, the move by Foxtel Media to enter the gaming space is more about creating an opportunity for clients to cross-buy across Foxtel into game environments.
“The one thing that we haven’t seen done well, probably from a wholesale perspective, is how do the advertisers actually play in this environment? And even in the last few weeks, talking to my advertisers, there’s many of them that know that’s the audience that they want to reach, and that includes Kayo as an advertiser too. Clearly from a gaming perspective, having brands that are authentic, i.e. a Kayo stadium, it has that level of authenticity in the gaming environment.
“So by placing that in first, we can then bring advertisers on that journey. We’re talking then about a partnership that spans Foxports, Kayo, and into the Kayo stadium within a Roblox environment. It gives those advertisers a kind of almost guaranteed opportunity to engage that new set of customers in a very, very different infrastructure.”
Frain added that all of this will be done with brand safety consideration: “A lot of the work we will do will be age-based targeting, and there’ll be a lot of considerations to work through on brand safety – that’ll probably be the utmost in our planning moving forward.”
Foxtel Media’s Mark Frain and Livewire’s Indy Khabra
Next generation ad formats
From next year, Kayo Sports and BINGE will introduce new digital ad products designed to integrate seamlessly into the viewing experience. These include L-Bars, which wrap brand messaging around live content without interrupting gameplay, and Pause ads, which activate when a viewer halts content, creating a full-screen, uncluttered placement.
Kayo Sports will also offer three to six-second solus bumper ads immediately before live matches, giving brands exclusive exposure during high-attention moments such as the opening round of the NRL or AFL.
Kayo Buddy and platform upgrades
A key highlight for 2026 is the launch of Kayo Buddy. The AI-assisted feature will provide real-time insights, including fixture updates, player statistics, and highlights, with functionality expanding over time to become what Foxtel Media calls the “ultimate viewing companion.”
Kayo Sports will also see a connected TV (CTV) upgrade, featuring new carousel integrations and sliding drawer sponsorships. On social, Kayo plans to scale its YouTube presence, leveraging its 14 million followers across Kayo and Fox Sports to deliver long-form, brand-safe content for younger audiences.
BINGE will undergo its own refresh, with updates to navigation, a redesigned interface, and a new TV guide aimed at helping viewers discover content more easily. The BINGE upgrade was signalled to Mediaweek in July when Kayo upgraded its mobile apps.
Subscriber momentum
The announcements follow strong growth across Foxtel’s streaming services. Kayo Sports has recorded a 9 per cent lift in subscribers year-on-year, and 20 per cent over the past two years. Viewing time rose 8 per cent in 2025, led by a 29 per cent increase in CTV usage this year and an 82 per cent jump over two years.
BINGE has also grown subscribers by 9 per cent year-on-year.
A new retail media division
Foxtel Media unveiled Retail Plus, a new retail media division that connects premium video content with e-commerce. It is designed to help brands reach audiences with smarter targeting, seamless retail integration, and measurable outcomes.
Launching first in pharmaceuticals and beauty through a partnership with Chemist Warehouse, Retail Plus will expand to categories including grocery, hardware, electronics, and fashion. Retail partners will collaborate with Foxtel Media to develop new retail products and content-led brand experiences for suppliers and customers.
Second-screen retail advertising experiences
As part of Retail Plus, Foxtel Media has partnered with allt.tv to introduce second-screen retail advertising. The technology, being trialled in Australia for the first time, links mobile apps with TV content in real time, making offers instantly actionable.
Examples include food delivery offers appearing during live sport or a grocery app pre-filling a shopping cart with ingredients from a cooking program. This removes friction from traditional QR-code-driven engagement and turns entertainment into immediate commerce.
Brand funded narrative storytelling
Narratv is a new branded storytelling division designed to create premium, brand-funded content for prime time television. It will produce both episodic series and short-form branded content, aiming to build deeper audience connections beyond traditional advertising.
Alex Hazlehurst, Cameron Daddo, and Eugene Loane
Recent brand collaborations have demonstrated the impact of this approach. Health and wellness series Gen Well, created with Amcal Pharmacy, delivered a 3.6x lift in brand health. Research found 92 per cent of viewers reported a more positive perception of Amcal, and 69 per cent said they were more likely to shop there.
Travel content also continues to play a role. Luxury Escapes returns with a new season following strong performance across its first two, generating more than 4.8 million stream starts and 1.1 million hours viewed.
Alexandra Hazlehurst, Head of Brand Solutions at Foxtel Media, will lead the new division. “Five years ago, branded content was seen as surface-level because it lacked the key ingredients that make content engaging: storytelling, narrative, and emotional connection. But we’ve come a long way since then, and our story-first formats have fundamentally changed the way brands connect with audiences and are backed up by the research metrics that matter, beyond reach and
frequency.”
She added: “Narratv is something we truly believe in. It brings storytelling craft and commercial clarity together, backed by Foxtel’s broadcast expertise. This is for brands that want to go beyond spots and dots, but rather bring their brand’s story to life, building deeper trust and resonance with consumers.”