Astro's way out isn't necessarily a Malaysian Netflix
Originally written in Chinese. Translated with AI, reviewed by Gary. Read the Chinese original →
Seeing Astro's latest results today left me a bit wistful.
This company used to be a Malaysian heavyweight. If your family wanted to watch TV, it basically meant Astro. Now its share price has fallen from a peak of nearly RM2 to around 6 sen.
Of course, broadcasting, pay-TV and traditional television are only getting harder.
Content used to be scarce, and whoever controlled the channels controlled the viewers. Now Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Disney+ and Apple TV are all fighting for people's time.
A family used to sit in front of the TV together. Now everyone has a phone and watches their own thing.
So here's the question.
Do traditional TV companies still have a chance to turn things around? Is building a Netflix or an Apple TV the only way out?
Foxtel didn't just build an app
I went looking and found a case that's very close to Astro and fairly successful: Foxtel.
Foxtel is an Australian company. It was also a traditional pay-TV business with a model very similar to Astro's: decoders, channels, sports, movies, family entertainment. It faced the same streaming shock and the same problem of young people no longer watching traditional TV.
But Foxtel is worth studying, because what it did wasn't as simple as "a traditional TV company launches an app".
It split the whole company apart and rebuilt it.
Foxtel kept serving its existing high-value households, and separately built Kayo Sports to go after sports streaming and BINGE to go after entertainment, with Fox Sports making content, Foxtel Media selling advertising and Hubbl doing streaming aggregation.
That's an interesting approach.
It didn't cram everything into one app and go head to head with Netflix. It split things up by user, by situation and by reason to pay.
More importantly, the numbers actually came through.
In 2021, Foxtel's total subscribers reached 4.019 million, with paid streaming subscribers up 155% year on year. Kayo Sports passed 1 million subscribers, and BINGE reached 827k.
By 2024, Foxtel's total subscribers reached 4.776 million, of which 3.305 million were streaming subscribers, about 69% of the whole base.
Many traditional TV companies do have an app. The problem is that the app is too small to offset the decline of the old business. Foxtel at least managed this: the old broadcast base kept falling, but the new streaming base became big enough to be the main growth engine.
In Q1 2025, its revenue was still growing 3%, and streaming already made up 34% of subscription revenue. In the end, DAZN bought Foxtel at an enterprise value of A$3.4 billion, roughly more than 7 times FY2024 EBITDA.
That shows the market isn't refusing to value traditional TV companies. It's asking whether you can turn old assets into new platform value.
Of course, Foxtel's path wasn't smooth either.
It also faced falling traditional subscribers, pressure from Netflix, expensive sports rights, and debt and refinancing pressure. But it made a few key choices: make sports the core asset, spin out Kayo and BINGE, let the old business keep generating cash flow, and run the new businesses under new brands in new ways.
It's actually a lot like the house-of-brands idea I keep talking about.
Not one brand doing everything, but a group where every brand has a very clear role. Different brands serve different users, different situations and different reasons to buy.
What could Astro do?
There's a real lesson here for Astro.
Astro's way out isn't necessarily building a "Malaysian Netflix". That direction is too expensive, and it's very hard to beat the global platforms.
A more realistic opportunity for Astro may be to become Malaysia's strongest aggregator of local content, sports and home entertainment.
Astro keeps serving its existing households. sooka goes more clearly after sports fans and mobile-first users. Local Malay, Chinese and Indian content becomes a moat Netflix will struggle to copy. Astro Media can do advertising, SME marketing, even retail media. Broadband bundles can become the entry point for home entertainment.
The point isn't to build an app.
The point is to understand again why users are still willing to pay today.
People used to buy Astro because they had no choice. Today, if you want them to pay, you have to give them a very clear reason.
Sports is a reason. Local content is a reason. Live events are a reason. Conveniently bringing all the streaming platforms together is a reason too.
At this point I should say that I'm an Astro subscriber myself.
But honestly, paying over a hundred ringgit a month and still having to sit through ads when I switch it on is a real headache.
I don't think Astro's problem is a lack of users or a lack of brand. The real problem is that what people expect from paid content has changed.
We used to pay because we had no choice. Now we pay because you give us a better experience and clearer value.
Traditional TV isn't without a future.
It just can't keep selling to today's users in yesterday's packaging.