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.
Richard Egan
Guest
Only Cheap if you want all the other programs. I have all my other viewing needs fulfilled by FTA.
Michael
Guest
What a great idea the broadcaster has come up with , edit out the boring parts of rugby with adds , the boring parts being scrims, whoever feeds it wins it, no need to watch, line outs 9 out of 10 feeds win, penalties , they could take 5min in some games, then we have open play left, estimated at 25 percent of game compared to AFl 80 percent NRL 75 percent. Just think the broadcaster could broadcast many games with such a small amount of time devoted to open play. The Kiwis have got it right,
Simmo
Guest
Exactly, Saturday night is the go. even if an hour delay, it doesn't matter as F.T.A. is a no brainer.
mahonjt
Guest
When the ARU have a domestic,10 club league with 27 rounds and finals then come and compare the ratings. If we want to compare lets do so by including the Asian Champions League matches and the soon to be televised FFA Cup Group of 32 matches. Alternatively we could turn the nation's top flight football league into a 12 game tournament and drive TV/turnstile growth by restricting supply? Can you also show me the Socceroos World Cup ratings against any Wallaby game ever - I know the answer - but I want you to tell the truth. Hell, more people will travel to Brazil to watch the Socceroo's play than will care about watching the Wallabies play anyone except the All Blacks for the 459th time for a trophy the rest of the world doesn't even know exists. Finally, if we take a existential view - do today's TV ratings matter if in 20 years no one is playing rugby in Australia at any level below a single provincial conference? This talk of phantom CH10 money is about rugby buying a ticket to future existence with a TV deal comparable to football's. Its not about building rugby for the next 50-100 years. That strategic space is where football has been for a while now and it has a list of strategic achievements as long as my arm (Move into AFC, World Cup Qualification, A-League, National Premier Leagues, FFA Cup, National Youth League, W-League, Integrated National Football Calendar, National Technical Centres and Centre of Excellence, National MyFootballClub club licensing and management system, National Mini Roos program, National Skill Acquisition Program, All Stars Game, National Football Family database, ACL participation, National Constitutional Reform (and associated statutory and regulatory reform), National Coach Accreditation scheme, National Coach Development program, National Referee Development program, National Football Curriculum etc...). To put this reform into some perspective, football now has 2.3m participants (players, officials, volunteers, members) and none of these strategic achievements even existed a decade ago when football was insolvent and the ARU were just beginning to piss its World Cup windfall and its 140 year legacy up the wall. What a decade it has been. Imagine what rugby might have achieved if only it understood a decade ago what its strategic challenges were and responded in a coherent way. And now rugby has another big strategic challenge to respond to - football.
Otagoz
Guest
What I think will happen is that the media in General will start to jockey for a strong position before the Olympics. Already the USA media are starting to predict that there will be an explosion of interest once Sevens hit the mainstream which is also influencing their attitude to 15s. A number of interviews and articles which I saw or read in the NZ media while over there tended to bear this out. Astute programmers in the Australian media should be savvy enough to also recognise the possibilities and want to tap into the viewng public's growing awareness and promote further growth. The larger the audience the more $$$ can be generated for all stakeholders.
Michael
Guest
We can all get excited about 10 exposing the masses to the game played in heaven, but that is the point, the more people exposed to our game in the last 30-40 years has been hell for the game , because no matter how much the rules are changed the less popular the game has become. It's time I believe for RU to stop kidding themselves (in an arrogant way ) and the face the fact that RU is boring. The game can't survive on hopes such as if only more people could see our game it would become more popular. Channel 10 is broke and when they go down Rugby will go with them. Rugby's only hope is to join with the NRL
Uncle Eric
Guest
Plenty of time for ads while they set and re-set the scrums.
Bondy
Guest
Why did Rugby leave seven in the first place ?.
Cadfael
Roar Guru
Comment in this morning's paper (18.4.14) that Seven is now interested in doing the Super Rugby.
Al
Guest
From todays Daily Telegraph: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/rugby/payto-panda-michael-hooper-a-chance-to-captain-wallabies-lealiifano-to-france/story-fni2fxyf-1226888478187 "LIVE Super Rugby on free-to-air television could finally be around the corner, with Channel Seven interested in acquiring games in the next TV deal. ARU boss Bill Pulver recently expressed confidence there would be “competitive tension” in the next broadcast rights negotiation, and speculation emerged this week that Seven were eyeing off rugby content. Our inquiries this week have confirmed the interest is genuine and Seven officials have already had informal chats to Pulver. The top-rating network is looking to add to their live sport offerings on digital channel 7mate, which targets “blokes” as its main audience. Sport is seen as a key plank of 7mate, and the channel has already got good results screening the Rugby League World Cup last year, V8s races and the US Masters golf. The majority of AFL content in Western Australia is screened on 7mate and an insider said ratings had not dropped despite being moved off the main channel. Sport is seen as increasingly valuable in TV land, given it is one of the few things viewers still have to watch live, not record or download later. Seven recently even bought the rights for the entire Gaelic Football season for 7mate, despite the seemingly small audience it would attract. The catch-22 of Super Rugby on FTA TV remains, however: with FoxSports only prepared to pay big dollars for total exclusivity, could the money gained from FTA sales make up the difference if and when Fox slashed their bid?"
Willam
Guest
I hope they don't get it, as it is the crickets rights all over again, they wanted to get some international cricket and fall short, they aren't really interested as they are there to push up the price and the article that references to it is terrible as they have been having low rating V8 Supercars, US Masters. I do hope that it's like the AFL from 2002-2011. I just hope Ten is in the deal as 7 would suck bad and they wouldn't get the International rugby as they got very ugly responses
stillmatic1
Guest
agreed zero. free to air is rubbish but holds those big events that obviously Australians don't feel the need to move away from and get on fox. it is weird why the take-up of fox is so low here compared to other countries.
stillmatic1
Guest
quade plays rugby, westie...............
Common Sense
Guest
Channel 7 looks to be chucking their hat in the ring as well.
Nick
Guest
How do they know I was watching the Shute Shield???
Pclifto
Guest
Or drivel even
Adam Smith
Guest
Not everyone can get Foxtel though. In my apartment building I can't get Foxtel so I completely miss out and have to read newspaper reports about Super Rugby.
In Brief
Guest
I'm just not sure that's such an issue. How many people know why a penalty is blown in basketball? I don't. Does it really matter? I think you almost have to be a rusted on supporter to get worked up by those types of things. The casual observer just assumes the decision is correct. The world's biggest sport soccer is full of howlers which can often cost a team the match. That's sport.
William
Guest
I reckon FNF, Saturday Footy, Sunday Night Footy and Monday Night Footy or even games played on ANZAC Day live on Ten or One.
William
Guest
I wanted Ten to get the rights to NRL and soon Nine will just take the live coverage of NRL away from Perth like they do in Adelaide