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Late Monday afternoon Channel Seven announced that they would be showing 14 of the San Francisco 49ers’ 16 NFL games on 7Mate this season.
Exclusive rights to the other two matches are already held by ESPN. This means that 2015 will well and truly be the year of Jarryd Hayne.
Personally, I hate this. Nothing against Hayne but as a long-time NFL fan and someone who doesn’t like the 49ers, never have and never will, I don’t want to watch them play every week.
Yes, I want to watch my team but I also want to watch a wide variety of teams playing each week. This is the attitude of the thousands of long-time NFL fans who for the past five, six, seven, fifteen, thirty years have woken up at 3am or 5am on a Monday morning and watched a sport they love.
These guys all have their own team and even many of those who are existing fans of the 49ers think it’s a bad move.
Even the NFL thinks it’s a bad move. Just hours before the announcement was made, NFL executive vice-president of international Mark Waller said:
“Part of our charter as NFL international is to represent all 32 teams equally. So the idea of having a specific broadcaster show all of one team’s games might not sit well with the other 31.”
It is not fair on the other 31 teams if one team is being shown every week and it’s not fair on their fans.
While I’m not happy with the decision I can see why Channel Seven has made this move. The hype surrounding Jarryd Hayne has been unlike anything I can remember in recent years.
Fox Sports has provided us with almost an hourly update every single day of his journey. Fairfax Media has published endless amounts of Hayne-related articles. Rugby league talk shows on both Channel Nine and Fox Sports have devoted significant amounts of time talking about Hayne and his NFL adventure.
The reason for this is clear; fans can’t get enough of the Hayne Plane.
It’s an incredible story, the battler from Western Sydney who threw away millions in order to chase a dream playing a foreign sport in a foreign country. The hardships he’s endured along the way, the doubters, the backlash.
And then there are the highlight reels of pre-season plays. The Sportscenter Top Ten appearances, the incredible jersey sales, the punt returns and the footwork. It’s been a perfect storm not only for Hayne but also for the media. Everything about this story has been portrayed in a compelling manner.
And while Hayne fatigue may be starting the set in, the proof is in the numbers. The Sydney Morning Herald refused to reveal exact readership numbers to me but they did state that some of Hayne’s articles have been among their most read stories over the past month. Not most read sports stories, but on the entire website.
Clearly people are interested in the Hayne story and Channel Seven is attempting to tap into the market that is evidently there. But the network must temper their ratings expectations. I believe that the first few games will rate highly, although it’s hard to see many getting out of bed at 3am to watch the 49ers’ week two game against the Steelers.
The games will rate highly because people will be interested in watching Hayne play in a live NFL game. But I’m very concerned that these high ratings will not last.
The fact is, Hayne will get very few, if any, snaps as a running back. We don’t know for sure but it looks as though he will be the starting punt returner for the 49ers, that’s around five snaps a game returning punts. He will probably get a few plays in the 49ers’ punt and kick coverage units, making tackles after his team kicks off or punts the ball away, give or take around 10 plays there.
I can’t see hundreds of thousands of people being willing to sit through three hours of ads and Colin Kaepernick getting sacked just to watch 30 seconds of Hayne. Even if Hayne is returning punts for touchdowns on a regular basis I feel most casual fans, the newbies to the sport, will be willing to just wait for Fox Sports to post the two-minute highlights video once the game is complete after the first few weeks.
Let’s face it, the 49ers are not expected to be very good this year. NFL expert Bill Barnwell at Grantland predicts the 49ers to be among the eight worse teams in the league. Barnwell doesn’t make such a statement without the numbers backing it up and he rarely gets it wrong. If the 49ers are losing there will be even less desire for casual fans to tune in and watch Hayne lose.
The long-time fans definitely won’t be watching because unless their team is playing San Francisco they will be either watching their team on NFL Gamepass or NFL Redzone on ESPN, which shows every Sunday afternoon game and every touchdown in those games, with no ads.
That’s right, no ads. NFL Redzone is six and a half hours of ad-free NFL action and is actually the perfect introduction to the sport for the fan that isn’t willing to sit through five commercial breaks a quarter, plus breaks between quarters.
But who knows, San Francisco might turn out to be unexpectedly good. Barnwell may be wrong. NaVorro Bowman’s return may inspire the defence to return to their previously great levels. The offensive line may keep Kaepernick on his feet long enough to allow him to tear apart opposition defences with both his arm and his feet.
And Hayne may get a number of snaps as a running back. Channel Seven‘s gamble will have paid off and thousands of Australians will now be genuine fans of the 49ers. I’ve been wrong before, who’s to say I won’t be wrong again?
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