The rivalry between Australian SVOD outfits Stan and Presto has heated up again this week after Presto chief executive Shaun James boldly laid claim to the number two spot, despite Stan claiming the same just weeks ago.
Stan recently revealed that they now have 750,000 gross subscribers, which include those merely trying the service for the free 30 days (which translates to an estimated 350,000 paying subscribers), and that makes them the second most popular service in Australia behind the million subscriber strong Netflix. The Nine and Fairfax backed Stan has seen rising growth in the last couple of months, and recent content deals has allowed the subscription streaming outfit to go head to head with Netflix.
However, Presto's chief executive says that based on the Hitwise ranking, it's their streaming service that's the second most popular in Australia.
"New Hitwise data shows we’re clear No 2 in terms of web traffic and we believe we’re No 2 to Netflix and other metrics support that, but we know it’s a really competitive market," said James.
Stan has already previously questioned the validity of Hitwise data, which only traffic to each service's respective websites. Stan hosts content on sub-domains, which they say is not included in the data. A recent analysis of the Hitwise data by Mumbrella estimates Presto's subscriber numbers at 250,000, some 100,000 behind Stan.
