Yesterday, the AFL announced a new deal for their television broadcast rights. The deal involves the Seven Network, Foxtel’s Fox Sports channels and Telstra combining to provide coverage of matches to consumers across a variety of platforms.
This new deal, generating a record $1.2 billion of revenue for the AFL, will give consumers the most comprehensive coverage of any sport available for viewing in Australia.
It’s a brilliant move. It’s exactly the sort of thing that other sports need to be doing – and not just in the massive money-making sense.
The AFL now have a reasonable compromise between having matches available on the free-to-air (FTA) Seven Network and a new PayTV only, Fox Sports AFL channel, as well as taking a real plunge into online delivery of match broadcasts.
Some would argue that the trend towards having more matches on PayTV than FTA is worrying as there is a reasonable number of the audience that don’t have room in their household budgets to afford the cost of subscribing to Foxtel’s services (minimum spend at the moment to receive the AFL on Fox Sports is around $60/month).
However, it is completely unrealistic to think that a commercial FTA broadcaster would dedicate time for the nine AFL matches that happen on a weekend.
There are more people out there that do not watch AFL on telly than those that do (grand final day excluded).
Writing off such a massive part of the weekend to one sport, with a minority audience, where, for the most part, that audience is only interested in one of those nine matches would be difficult.
It makes sense to only show matches from each round that will gather reasonable ratings (and, thus, advertising dollars) and offload the rest.
Of course, Foxtel needs to look at their pricing, as I’m pretty sure that is what is holding them back from achieving the US levels of market penetration that they so desire.
Secondly, the AFL are making the first big push in having their matches available live, online – albeit restricted currently to only one internet service provider; Telstra.
The V8 Supercars already have a service streaming their events live to internet (outside of televised broadcasts) as does the ASP Pro Tour (who, frankly, have left other sports for shame in their pursuit of internet broadcasting).
What we really need, though, is a sport with mass appeal to really show off just what this medium of delivery is capable of providing to fans of a sport that are often ignored by FTA TV broadcasters.
Of course, there are complaints along the lines of “why should I have to pay to see matches featuring my favourite team?” or “FTA channels put too many ads in matches! It should be uninterrupted.”
Well, the answer for the former is, if you want a high-quality production you have to pay for it – either through advertising on FTA or through direct cost.
The latter; they have to put ads in places where you watch; otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose, yes?
If you’re wanting less ads, then there is an option for you to pursue – through either Foxtel or Telstra.
The new AFL deal provides options; it provides content everywhere; it provides a framework for what all other sports in this country should be working towards.
This is a massive win for consumers and a massive win for the AFL. Good on them.
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