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Marquee A-League matches like last night’s Melbourne Derby appear set to become available on free-to-air television, with rumours surfacing today regarding the future of the league’s broadcast rights.
Fox Sports is reportedly in line to secure an extension of their current Pay TV broadcast rights for all A-League games, coming at a cost of $50 million a year.
That deal is expected be announced this week according to the Herald Sun, covering a period of four years for a total value of $200 million.
However the news that will likely bring greater change and excitement for A-League fans is that a deal to bring the A-League’s marquee Saturday-night slot to free-to-air TV is also expected to come before the 2017-18 season.
At the moment the only A-League coverage on free-to-air TV is the Friday night game, broadcast on SBS every week, meaning that the always popular Saturday night slot is typically restricted to Foxtel subscribers only.
The report is that a new free-to-air deal made with one of Australia’s major networks Seven, Nine or Ten will replace the SBS deal and potentially bring the A-League a further $10-15 million.
The broadcast will likely be a simulcast of the Fox Sports production.
That would mean a little less in total than FFA CEO David Gallop’s claim that the A-League could potentially secure as much as $80 million per year in broadcast rights, but will be an impressive increase on past deals regardless, signifying the league’s continued growth.
The current A-League deal, which expires at the end of this season, was worth a total of $40 million per year from the deals made with Fox Sports and SBS.
The free-to-air deal is not likely to be secured until after the future of Big Bash League broadcast rights is decided, with networks expected to begin bidding for those rights, currently held by Channel Ten, in February.
The Saturday night A-League deal will likely prove to be a consolation prize of sorts for one of the networks that misses out on the Big Bash rights.
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