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Yesterday the FFA confirmed that the free-to-air rights to the next A-League season have landed, via Fox Sports, at Channel Ten.
Ten-owned One will simulcast Fox Sports’ Saturday night games as well as all of the finals matches and, one assumes, the grand final too.
As disappointed as the FFA must be that they weren’t able to sell the rights themselves directly to a free-to-air network – an arrangement that would likely have been more lucrative for them – this situation nevertheless holds nothing but promise for the sport in Australia. Of all the available commercial FTA options, Channel Ten was the most desirable, with Channel Seven stained by a chequered history with the round-ball game and Channel Nine very much focused on rugby league.
That the finals games will be shown live is also a huge improvement on the hour-delay SBS were forced to work under. I watched this year’s grand final while hopelessly cut-off from stable, non-mobile internet access – and, therefore, the Foxtel app – and was forced to enact a social media embargo while watching on SBS so as not to ruin the score.
How bitter-sweetly that memory segues us to the game’s departure from its traditional broadcaster.
SBS’s connection with football in this country has dwindled these past few years, especially over the past nine months, a period which saw Fox Sports amp up its coverage of the local league after losing the rights to the English Premier League, the next most popular football competition.
If the A-League is to stride purposefully into the Australian mainstream sporting consciousness, perhaps it inevitably must make those strides away from SBS. In truth, since the 2013 deal that awarded SBS partial A-League broadcasting rights alongside Fox Sports, they haven’t done enough to cement their claim to being the sport’s rightful free-to-air home.
Les Murray, such a beloved figure in this country’s football broadcasting tapestry, retired in 2014. David Zdrillic has not been an adequate replacement.
Craig Foster – in my view the best pundit in the country – has been a compelling, articulate voice in the football media for some time now, and one wonders exactly where his enduring association with SBS will end up now without the A-League rights. Foster is also central to the impressive southern expansion bid and is no doubt occupied somewhat by his role as the bid’s director of football.
(Image: AAP Image/Joe Castro)
SBS have made numerous attempts to build an attractive architecture around its football coverage, the foundation of which has been flagship program The World Game, but by and large most of the ventures have been either ill-conceived or poached by rivals.
The loosely-structured football variety program Thursday FC ran just five months, from October 2013 to February 2014, and was – up until the ABC’s infamous coverage of the recent friendly between Liverpool and Sydney FC – the holder of the title for most shudderingly unfunny football-themed program in Australian history. Earlier, successful attempts at a comedy football format – Santo, Sam and Ed’s Cup Fever, a genuinely hilarious accompaniment to SBS’s 2010 World Cup coverage – was quickly poached, first by Channel Seven, then by Fox Sports.
Speaking of poaching, many of SBS’s best pundits and commentators have also been lured into the cable TV family, with Andrew Orsatti, Simon Hill and Ned Zelic all now working in cable television having started their Australian media careers at SBS. Orsatti is at ESPN, Hill is Fox Sports’ best match caller and Zelic, with his own oddly endearing brand of sleepy-eyed irreverence, is one of Fox Sports’ most popular and meme-worthy colour-commentators.
As sincerely admirable as Craig Foster’s loyalty to SBS has been – he surely would have had lucrative offers to defect to Fox Sports as well – it would be a crying shame for him to continue to be under-utilised and under-exposed at SBS now that they have no A-League to show.
It appears as though Channel Ten will not try to put on their own A-League coverage, and this is a good thing – the Fox Sports team have put out an extremely palatable product this season, which has softened the sourness their obvious power over the fixture scheduling has caused.
Mark Bosnich is a perfectly jocular frontman, and his dynamic with the straightest of straight men, Mark Rudan, is very watchable indeed. The fact that the entire country will now be able to enjoy, live and free, a selection of well-packaged marquee Saturday night blockbusters is something that sends a lovely tingle down the spine of every person hopeful about the A-League’s future in Australia.
Perhaps we’ll miss it being the niche ‘other’ of Australian sport, tucked away on the kooky TV network. The cloistered, embattled existence of football in this country has bred a fierce sense of devotion, something that is most joyously apparent below the line on the Roar’s football tab. We don’t like to admit it, but we do get a sense of distorted pride from being sequestered so, like we’re part of a members club or a secret society.
It is difficult after playing second or third fiddle to the other codes for so long not to fetishise, even to revel in, the ‘us versus them’ mentality. This demeanour is not, however, conducive to growing the game, and the mainstream access Channel Ten offers is something that can open the sport up to new areas.
As the Special Broadcasting Service recedes into the rear-view mirror, the A-League is moving forward.