Government policy failure lets overseas streamers ‘eat our lunch’, says Seven West Media chair Kerry Stokes

Seven West chairman Kerry Stokes has accused the federal government of failing to regulate overseas streaming platforms and social media giants.

Director Ryan Stokes and chairman Kerry Stokes at the Seven West Media AGM on Thursday. Picture: Joseph Lam

Seven West chairman Kerry Stokes has accused the federal government of failing to regulate overseas streaming platforms and social media giants that have been able to “eat its lunch”, while ­traditional media companies ­decline.

The billionaire also criticised the ABC, which he said had carried out an “egregious and unfair assault on our business” in a recent Four Corners program that claimed the company had a toxic culture and instilled fear into journalists who were afraid to speak up. That had later come back to bite the national broadcaster, which now faces its own ­allegations of “racism, misogyny and bullying”, he said.

Mr Stokes said overseas streaming services were of little benefit to the Australian economy. “Unlike them, we pay our taxes, we look after our people, and we follow strict broadcasting rules in this country,” he said.

“Unfortunately the federal government has failed to grip a legislative environment that ­allows Australia unvetted and guaranteed access to free sports broadcast programming.”

Seven West CEO Jeff Howard told the AGM that first-half trading for the current financial year had been mixed, reflecting the impact of the Olympics.

“Based on performance to date and forward bookings, Seven’s revenue for the first half of FY25 is currently pacing down about 6.5 per cent,” Mr Howard said.

He said when adjusting for one-off events, such as the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the company estimated underlying first-half revenue would be 1 per cent below the same time last year.

“SWM remains on track to deliver full-year net cost reduction of $20m-$30m versus FY24,” he said. Seven shares fell 3 per cent to 16c on Thursday.

K Capital’s David Kingston, asked Mr Stokes whether there was any hope that the company would show a capital gain.

“Seven West Media shareholders have been punished with large capital losses and also no dividends since 2017. The issue here for shareholders is, is there any hope?” he asked.

He went on to ask whether shareholders should “give up” on the company and questioned why Seven had bought a large stake in media group ARN.

Mr Stokes replied: “Unfortunately, I actually agree with you … there’s nothing you’ve said that isn’t true. We live in an environment which has changed dramatically, and it has changed because of streamers like Amazon, Google and Facebook, who are eating our lunch.

“And we’ve got a government and policy settings which make it impossible to contain them. They take our product, redistribute it in various fashions, they clip it, they put it on YouTube, they do all sorts of things with it for which we get no reward.”

Mr Stokes said social media platforms had allowed users to populate content belonging to the company without any “reservation”.

“(Somehow) It’s OK for these people to clip it up and put it on TikTok or any form of platform they wish to without any reservation or control,” he said.

“If you go to TikTok, you’ll see more excerpts from Home and Away than you will on Home and Away … but we get nothing for that and our government doesn’t seem to think it’s worthwhile doing anything about it.”

Mr Stokes had also taken aim at ABC and its Four Corners program that had recently claimed Seven Network employees were afraid to speak up and were being gagged from doing so.

“Our national broadcaster the ABC’s Four Corners program recently veered well away from the ABC’s charter to engage in egregious and unfair assault of our business and the reputation of our good people,” he said.

Seven had filed a formal complaint in which Mr Stokes said his company made a “compelling case” showing how the ABC had “clearly failed to meet the broadcaster’s own principles of impartiality, accuracy and fairness”.

That had “unsurprisingly been ignored”, he said, adding the ABC’s Ombudsman “refused” to investigate.

But that had “backfired” on the ABC. “It itself is now the subject of hypocrisy in trans-cultural problems, including racism, misogyny and bullying, little of which has been reported by its own national networks,” Mr Stokes said.

Seven West Media reported revenue of $1.41bn in the 12 months to June 30, down 5 per cent. Its net profit after tax sank 69 per cent to $45m.