Boss says Spark Sport ‘different’

Spark chief executive Jolie Hodson says the company will continue investing in its streaming sports venture Spark Sport, following the sale of its television entertainment service Lightbox.

No major new sports rights are expected to come on to the market until rugby league rights come up for grabs in about a year.

But Hodson said Spark planned to maintain its investment in ‘‘media and content’’ at current levels for the foreseeable future.

Assuming Spark pays for its existing sports content rights in regular instalments, the approach suggests that Spark expects to divert money that it would otherwise have needed to spend buying fresh content for Lightbox into its sport business.

‘‘Our overall investment in media will probably remain at similar levels but obviously we are leaving one part of that investment and entering another part,’’ Hodson said.

Spark is back on the growth path after it grabbed its largest share of the mobile market for eight years and saw the decline in its traditional calling revenues slow in its half-year results posted yesterday. The company reported a 9.2 per cent rise in its net profit to $167 million for the six months to the end of December.

Revenues for the period grew

4 per cent, to just over $1.8 billion. Spark shares were up 3 cents at

$4.78 in lunchtime trading, close to their 10-year high of $4.84, after investors responded positively to the result.

Spark said its mobile service revenues grew 5.5 per cent, giving it a market share of just over

40 per cent of that market for the first time since 2012.

Material released to investors provided no clear information on the financial performance of Spark Sport.

Spark is believed to have lost millions of dollars on its coverage of last year’s Rugby World Cup in Tokyo, which was tarnished by outages during a key pool game between the All Blacks and South Africa that resulted in refunds.

But chief financial officer Stefan Knight said Spark Sport had been the biggest contributor to an increase of $19m in its ‘‘other’’ revenue category during the half-year that also includes revenues from Spark’s ‘‘internet of things’’ business and its data and analytics business, Qrious.

Hodson declined to rate

Spark’s commitment to Spark Sport on a scale of one to 10 but said Spark viewed its investment in Spark Sport differently from its former investment in Lightbox.

Spark agreed to sell Lightbox to Sky during the period for $6m, prompting speculation that Spark Sport could also experience the same fate. Hodson told seemingly sceptical analysts on a conference call that there was probably only room for ‘‘one local player’’ in the streaming entertainment market and that Spark was ‘‘not the best natural owner’’ of that content.

But the same did not necessarily go for Spark Sport, she indicated.