Tim Worner changing game at Seven West with 7Plus

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Not only has Tim Worner survived a horror 12 months running Seven West. The media boss is about to “change the game” with the imminent launch of Seven’s new digital future.

As the market value of Kerry Stokes’s Seven West languishes at about $1 billion, Worner and his digital chief Clive Dickens will hope the launch in coming weeks of stand-alone “over the top” digital platform 7Plus will reinvigorate their scandal-mired network.

Margin Call understands the likely bumper broadcast of the AFL grand final on Saturday and Melbourne Spring Carnival in October and November were ­selected as the perfect launch pad for the new platform. (It is believed this week’s ABC-led coverage of Seven has just been a happy bonus.)

7Plus will allow viewers to access Seven’s broadcast programming, including the simulcast of live premium sport, as well as other library content not currently aired on the network.

It is believed the secret 7Plus “over the top” platform will allow viewers to access content from a range of devices. Television is expected to remain the dominant force for some time yet.

The platform is planned to fundamentally change the way the network engages with advertisers, although measurement of audience across all types of ­devices both online and offline has proved a challenge for the ­industry.

The overhaul follows the recasting of Seven’s languishing joint venture with Yahoo, which earlier this year was written down in Seven’s accounts by $75.5 million to now be worth about $130m.

Worner is expecting revenue from Seven’s digital properties to double this financial year to $80m, in large part driven by 7Plus, which new digital sales ­director James Bayes is in charge of flogging.

It will be launched under the hashtag “Change The Game”, which, as it happens, is also used by the Argentine women’s ­soccer team in their campaign to be paid fairly. Will these women ever stop complaining?

Stoking the flames

Minor Ten shareholder Daniel Du didn’t have any luck in the Supreme Court yesterday in his attempt to delay nonagenarian billionaire Sumner Redstone’s CBS takeover of Australia’s third-placed commercial free-to-air television network.

But Du and his fellow shareholders, numbering about 12,000, will get another chance in just over a fortnight to complicate the CBS takeover.

Justice Ashley Black said Ten shareholders had until 4pm on Friday, October 13 to oppose the transfer of shares in Ten Network Holdings to CBS under the proposed terms.

Whether Du — reportedly a final-year law student at Macquarie University — plays a further role will become clear in coming weeks.

He’s certainly not without legally experienced fellow shareholders on the Ten registry. Most notably there is Lachlan Murdoch, whose private vehicle Illyria has a 7.7 per cent stake, and Murdoch’s fellow bid partner and billionaire Bruce Gordon, who holds almost 15 per cent.

Also on the register is Crown billionaire James Packer, who has a 7.7 per cent stake, and one of the country’s most famous litigants Gina Rinehart, with an 8.5 per cent stake.

But there is another mostly overlooked billionaire on the Ten register for whom the network’s future is far more commercially significant.

Seven billionaire Kerry Stokes still holdsa stake in Ten through his Network Investment Holdings that was last declared in the 2016 Ten annual report at 3.12 per cent.

Margin Call understands that that was reduced to about 1 per cent before Ten went into administration.

Even after the selldown, that’s still enough to place Stokes among Ten’s top 100 shareholders.

And it means that, should Stokes feel the urge, the mastermind of the infamous $200m C7 case could deal himself into this latest Supreme Court action.

It could be tempting, if only to complicate the commercial life of one of Seven’s commercial television competitors.

Although with human resources fires raging and a digital rebirth imminent, Stokes might decide he has enough media side projects on the go right now.

Eagle-eyed

Kerry Stokes’s favourite politician, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, and Bishop’s partner and constant travelling companion David Panton, have been in the US since mid-September bonding with world leaders including US President Donald Trump, first lady Melania, first daughter Ivanka and British PM Theresa May.

Bishop has been in New York for the UN General Assembly Leaders week before moving to Washington for meetings with the Trump administration and congress.

Yesterday the Foreign Minister was in transit back to Oz, just in time for the grand final of her beloved AFL, which is sadly this year not featuring her West Coast Eagles.

While in DC, Bishop and Panton took the time for an early morning run around the capital with members of the Baltimore Washington Eagles, a local Australian football club affiliated with Bishop’s Eagles, of which she is a former director.

Julie Bishop, David Panton, centre, and some of the Baltimore Washington Eagles in Washington DC.

Bishop sported the Eagles kit, while Panton went with a University of Kentucky T-shirt, clearly a proud father now that his talented son Matthew Panton has just made his debut with the Kentucky Wildcats college football team.

For the past two years the young Panton, who went to Melbourne Grammar, has been playing ball for Ivy League Columbia University in New York, where he recently graduated in psychology after first being recruited as a rower.

His new college is a little further from DC, but still only a four-hour flight if Dad was keen to see his son punt before a sellout crowd of 80,000 fans. (The Wildcats lost to the Florida Gators 27-28 in a final-minute heart-breaker.)

Meanwhile, Australia’s new consul-general in New York, Alastair Walton, the former boss of Goldman Sachs down under, was also doing his bit while Bishop was in town last week. The banker turned diplomat threw a party for his boss on Friday evening in what was also a chance for our man in NYC to showcase the consular residence, which has recently been — modestly — refurbished.

A Barry Crocker

Back to billionaires.

The James Packer, Kerry Stokes and Rupert Murdoch-backed online fantasy sports betting outfit Draftstars might need to reconsider its spokesman if former AFL hardman and boxer Barry Hall can’t keep a lid on his temper.

Hall is in trouble again after being caught on video striking an opponent twice while playing in the Queensland AFL grand final last weekend. It follows a career in the AFL littered with on-field violence.

Hall is the face of Draftstars, with the betting outfit advertising heavily in the lead-up to grand final weekend in Sydney and Melbourne.

The recently released Crown annual report reveals that Draftstars’ ad spend has been supported by Packer’s Crown Resorts to the tune of a $2m, with the Crown-controlled CrownBet a one-third shareholder in the Northern Territory-licensed enterprise.

Murdoch’s News Corporation-owned Fox Sports and Stokes’s Seven each also have 33 per cent.

On the board is Bruce McWilliam and Kurt Burnette for Seven, Matt Tripp and Ken Barton for Crown, and Patrick Delany for Fox Sports.