Foxtel burned $200M on the Hubbl streaming box — 18 months later, maintenance mode

It began with a lavish launch event on Sydney Harbour, with global News Corp boss Robert Thomson, every Australian media competitor and stars invited to marvel at Foxtel's latest innovation. The product, developed over years as Project Magneto, was hyped as the only thing you would ever need to watch TV; Sky News called it a 'seminal moment in television'. Eighteen months and $200 million later, Foxtel boss Patrick Delany confirmed the tap was off: Hubbl was in 'maintenance mode'. Media executives privately asked whether this was the worst launch in Australian media history.

The fiasco looked avoidable from the start. The market was already awash with equivalents — Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Amazon Firestick, plus a legion of connected TVs. Foxtel even had the chance to join its minority owner Telstra in buying a piece of Fetch TV, a similar product, in 2022, and declined, instead partnering with Comcast and pushing Hubbl ahead. The billed differentiator, 'stack and save', promised to fix blowing-out subscription costs — but the only services you could stack were Netflix and Foxtel's own four streaming products. To save money, Hubbl users had to buy more Foxtel.

Then came the marketing: radio duo Hamish Blake and Andy Lee paid millions to front the 'Every day I'm Hubblin' campaign, endlessly mocked online and on Gruen, with tens of millions more in ads and News Corp's papers forfeiting millions in ad space. Even after the blitz, Delany admitted most Australians were 'still not quite understanding what it does'. Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi saw Hubbl pucks discounted at half price within months; Trustpilot scored the software 1.2 out of 5. With rumoured sales of around 80,000 units, new owner DAZN moved swiftly to close the chapter.

It entered a saturated market years late: Apple TV 'could have had its driver's license' by the time Hubbl launched, against Chromecast, Firestick and connected TVs.

The headline feature was a lock-in play: 'stack and save' only discounted Foxtel's own products plus Netflix, so the value proposition was buying more Foxtel.

The launch substituted marketing volume for product clarity — tens of millions in ads and forfeited News Corp space could not fix customers 'not quite understanding what it does'.

Launching a me-too device against Apple, Google and Amazon needs a reason to exist; 'stack and save' that only stacks your own subscriptions is not one.

Foxtel put Hubbl into 'maintenance mode' in September 2025, 18 months after launch, with the boxed product effectively retired and DAZN, which had acquired Foxtel, moving quickly to end the chapter. The device joined Fetch-competitor Telstra TV in retirement — a market Foxtel could have shared for a fraction of the cost in 2022.