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Squash legend Michelle Martin says pay TV is cruelling the development of Australian sport and has urged the government to step in before child obesity spirals out of control.
As football grand final fever grips Australia, mother-of-two Martin is alarmed and appalled at the diminishing number of sports other than AFL and NRL available to free-to-air television viewers.
Having already cut their French and US Open coverage, the Nine Network recently announced they were also chopping Wimbledon next year, meaning the Australian Open remains the only tennis grand slam accessible to non-subscribers.
Golf majors, including the iconic British Open, are also fast becoming endangered species as free-to-air networks shell out millions of dollars for the TV rights of the two main football codes.
Free-to-air coverage of rugby union, soccer and athletics has fallen dramatically in recent years.
“It’s disgraceful. It’s all about the corporate dollar and advertising,” Martin told AAP.
“It’s up to the government to step in. It’s up to the government to say `enough’s enough, we can’t let all these free-to-air sports programs go to pay TV’.
“They wonder why Australian kids are obese. Not all kids fit into the stereotype. Not everyone is built to be a rugby league or an AFL player.
“It’s quite sad the way it’s gone. Unless you’ve got money, you don’t get to watch decent sport on TV.”
Martin won three world championships and six British Opens – the Wimbledon of squash – during a glittering career and, at 43, remains super fit, still competing with, and beating, most men’s players in Sydney.
But with obesity among Australian children already rising at a faster rate than any other developed nation in the world, Martin says it’s imperative that Australian kids get greater exposure to sporting role models.
“My boys (aged five and nine), they play soccer, they play squash, tennis but they wouldn’t even know who Rafael Nadal is because we don’t have pay TV,” Martin said.
“Other than the football codes, there’s just no free-to-air and I just think that’s really sad for the low-income families and the kids from those families.
“There’s no aspirations to aspire to anything other than to a rugby code and not everyone is going to be a rugby league player.
“My kids are only small – I wouldn’t be putting them into rugby league at all. There’s no way.
“There are lots of other sports out there that kids can play but they’re just not being exposed to it.
“Okay, they might be exposed to it in the playground at school, where they play different sports, but to actually see it played by the top players – that’s what they aspire to.
“That’s how they grow up. They want to be a Rafael Nadal, they want to be a Federer, or a Steffi Graf …
“But how are they exposed to it on that international level if they’re not seeing it on TV?”
Martin, who lives in Sydney’s northern beaches, quoted her local mayor as saying there were 3000 children aged under 18 in her catchment area alone.
“I’m not saying they can’t afford pay TV, but a lot wouldn’t,” she said.
“Those are the kids that you want playing sport. Get them out of the unit blocks and playing sport.
“Expose them. Get them off Nintendo and Wii (computer games) and expose them to something else that’s out there for them.”
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