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Recently on the Roar, Mike Tuckerman wrote that free-to-air-TV can’t save the cash-strapped A-League.
He said, “… the sticking point – aside from the fact that Fox Sports essentially subsidises the A-League and are understandably reluctant to give away their own product – is that no free-to-air network has shown a willingness to stump up some cash and actually pay for it.”
This position has existed for some time now and isn’t a new reality for football fans or the networks, but what may be the game changer is the recent blockbuster AFL rights deal – and not in the way many football fans may think.
With Fox Sports securing the right to show every single AFL game live, the argument has been floated that more people will be willing to migrate to pay television and pay to get a superior product in terms of the availability of games and coverage that will be interruption-free.
On Offsiders the other week, Gerard Whateley made this bold statement:
“…this is a tipping point for pay television in this country and if the NRL mirrors the same deal, then we’ll go very quickly from 34 per cent, I believe, to double that.”
To go from having pay television in one out of every three households to two out of three households is a big step, but what will happen if it actually does occur?
What would this mean for football in Australia in terms of expansion?
Should football fans be worried that there isn’t an A-League component on free-to-air-TV?
If pay television does expand its reach into Australian homes by marketing itself as the premier network for sports coverage, then perhaps, it is not such a big issue that pay television is the horse upon which the local game has hitched its wagon.
If the AFL and NRL fans in this country begin forking out the dollars to watch their winter codes, then this expanded audience will also have the opportunity to watch sport over the summer and, in most cases, the scheduling will be such that they don’t have to choose between football and cricket.
In this situation, does the A-League and the FFA really lose out by not negotiating with any free-to-air networks?
The value of the product is enhanced by the exclusivity of the A-League being on pay television, which will hopefully mean a bigger deal for football in terms of the dollars on the negotiating table.
One of the primary concerns held by football fans has been that only getting A-League games live into about one-third of Australian households (and possibly less) is not going to help grow the game.
But if pay television starts to grow and doubles its audience on the back of bumper deals for the AFL and NRL, then this argument gets weaker.
Whilst it is a big assumption upon which to base an argument, if pay television becomes the way in which the majority of Australian households choose to watch their sport, is it the right thing for football to be going against the grain in that regard?
The two big holes in this scenario are that unlike football, both the NRL and AFL already have games on free-to-air networks and that no matter how much growth pay television experiences, until it has 100 per cent coverage of households, it will never have as broad coverage as free-to-air.
I have always firmly been in the camp seeking live games on free-to-air-TV, but these latest developments have got me wondering whether fans need to start to recognise that in Australia, football and free-to-air-TV just don’t mix and that it might not be as big a problem as once imagined.
It is clear that I am posing a lot of questions without providing many answers (if any), but that is just a reflection of my uncertainty in regards to this issue.
It’s one that is likely to be a live one for quite some time and won’t be resolved until the impacts of the new deals become apparent.
But if pay television does double its audience in the next few years, then many fans will be forced to reassess their positions.
As John Maynard Keynes once said, “When the facts change, I change my mind.”
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