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Every now and again, a news story makes you sit up and say, “That’s bloody excellent.” Reports yesterday of Network Ten’s interest in showing Super Rugby on free-to-air television was one of them.
And it is bloody excellent. Of all the criticisms of Super Rugby, high on the list is the game’s complete lack of presence on Australian free-to-air television.
Fairfax reported yesterday than the Ten Network was hoping to expand on the success of luring cricket’s Twenty20 Big Bash League to free-to-air this past summer by adding Super Rugby to its growing stable of premium live sport.
Only late last year, Ten snared rights to the V8 Supercars series for six years from 2015 in partnership with Fox Sports. Ten is already the free-to-air home of the Wallabies, including the upcoming June Test series against France, the Bledisloe Cup, the Rugby Championship and the Spring Tour to Europe.
Ten’s interest is surely music to the ears of ARU CEO Bill Pulver, who only a fortnight ago told us, “I would love to see more rugby on free-to-air networks to reach more people, but previously, there hasn’t been an appetite from free-to-air networks to make this happen.”
That comment wasn’t completely true. Ten did indeed show interest in the Australian Super Rugby games in the last round of negotiations, however Fox Sports offered up more money to retain exclusive rights.
The voice of Australian rugby himself, Ten’s Gordon Bray, told Scott Allen and myself earlier this year, “It’s something that rugby knows that they have to address, but it’s very difficult because Mr Murdoch is a huge funder of the game and without his money, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”
“So if there could be a balance struck somewhere, so that free-to-air can get a slice of the Super Rugby action, I think that would be a very positive move,” Bray said, on The Roar Rugby Show.
It might yet happen, if Ten’s interest at this early stage turns into a genuine bid.
Ten executive chairman Hamish McLennan told Fairfax, “Bill Pulver is doing a great job with rugby and we’d be interested in getting some Super Rugby onto free-to-air. We think rugby needs to broaden and get into the mainstream to build its fan-base.” Very few rugby folk in Australia would disagree with that sentiment.
The fact that such a senior figure in Australian free-to-air television is talking about showing rugby to more people can only be seen as a good thing.
The first two seasons of the BBL shown exclusively on Fox Sports averaged solid numbers in the range of 200,000-250,000 viewers per game. In the first season on Ten, a metropolitan and regional average of 910,000 viewers made the BBL the most watched domestic sporting competition in the country.
Current Australian ratings for Super Rugby on Fox Sports don’t make for inspiring reading. According to media trade online journal Mediaweek, last weekend 97,000 viewers watched the Reds-Brumbies derby, 94,000 watched the Force-Waratahs match and 67,000 tuned in for the Chiefs-Rebels game beforehand.
71,000 viewers took in the earlier Highlanders-Bulls match on Friday night.
To put that in perspective, 61,000 viewers tuned into specialist pay-TV horse racing channel TVN for the Doncaster Handicap on Saturday afternoon. Interestingly, 35,000 people watched Sydney clubs Norths and Southern Districts in the Shute Shield on ABC1, so there obviously is an appetite for rugby on free-to-air.
Of course these numbers are well short of what the AFL and NRL achieve on free-to-air, though they’re on par with or even better than many AFL games on Fox Footy. They’re also consistently better than A-League games on Fox Sports.
And this is where Pulver’s comments make sense about Australian rugby wanting to at least match the combined $40 million-per-year deal obtained by Football Federation Australia. In a content-sharing arrangement, Friday night A-League matches have been simulcast live on Fox Sports and SBS2 this season and will be for the duration of the four-year deal.
Coincidentally, SBS beat Ten to secure the FFA deal, which includes Socceroos games on delay.
Ten’s rugby roots are well known. The Wallabies achieved some wonderful ratings last season. Lachlan Murdoch was the chairman and director of the Ten Network Holdings board before resigning only last month to become the co-chair of News Limited, part-owner of Fox Sports.
Ten Network Holdings is also a minority investor in The Roar, and our rugby forums speak for themselves.
Ten and Fox Sports’ V8 Supercars partnership shapes as a blueprint for rugby. It pinched the series from the Seven Network for more money, but with less product remaining on free-to-air TV.
The figure? A touch over the same $40 million per year paid for football.
Of course, as Australian rugby discovered during the last round of negotiations, a free-to-air component could reduce the amount Fox Sports are willing to pay for shared access to Australian derbies or trans-Tasman matches. This might mean that the new deal brings little or no increase to the $25 million per year paid by Fox Sports for the five years from 2011.
One ace up Ten’s sleeve might be the digital rights. My understanding is that SANZAR will be negotiating the digital rights for Super Rugby and The Rugby Championship separately this time around.
TenPlay, a well-known multi-device digital platform, is ready and waiting for live sport. A combination of digital rights plus one or two live free-to-air games per week on Ten, with Fox Sports still showing the full round, could bring Australian rugby the windfall it desires.
The ARU and SANZAR need to jump all over this interest from Ten and start working on extracting the maximum value. I’d suggest involving Fox Sports in discussions early in the piece to see if a partnership arrangement will be feasible for all involved.
The success of the BBL is the pointer. I’d be pleasantly surprised if rugby achieved anything like the same 300 per cent increase in viewers on free-to-air TV, but even just a doubling of current numbers would be a significant win for the network and the game.
Given that SANZAR is yet to confirm the format of the competition from 2016 onwards, we’re still a long way from knowing which channel we’ll need to tune into.
A lot of water needs to flow under a lot of bridges, but Ten’s declaration of interest is some bloody excellent news for rugby in Australia.