The boss of Kayo Julian Ogrin told Mumbrella this week that they’d be keen to look at a bid for the next round of A-League rights, if they go to market.
So would Kayo try and secure the rights separately from Fox Sports? Is this nothing more than a throwaway comment?
I would imagine that there are a few issues that the various groups running professional football in Australia need to resolve before going to market through.
Seems to have got a mixed response where it matters, on Sokkah TwitterX
The A-League desperately needs to be aligned to a service that has either the EPL or UCL.
There’s an audience watching EPL that is likely not being exposed to the A-League as much as it could be.
If you’re an Aussie sport where the domestic product is well off the best in class you need to align where the best product actually is. That’s what the NBL have done well - being on ESPN where they have NBA rights.
Foxtel/Kayo gets you into the Fox Sport ecosystem so o that also adds some benefit.
You’d think Nine (Stan) would be keen then, one does wonder how many more sports contracts Sneesby & Co can afford to sign though, with other potentials outside looming NRL renewal in Bathurst 1000/Supercars, MRC/Victorian and NSW Racing calendars (align with VRC/Melb Cup carnival), Stawell Gift (align with Olympics), 2026 Comm Games (presumed to now be Glasgow again) and Rugby Australia (with Rugby World Cup reportedly already going to be signed).
No doubt Stan would be interested given they have other football content, but can they afford any more rights with a new NRL deal needing to be negotiated.
Unless there is a push from Foxtel and/or Kayo to get back into football, I don’t see how going with them is advantageous for the sport - football fans are already complaining about the high price to follow their sport thanks to streamer rights fragmentation.
Kayo’s summer subscriber numbers would be concerning them - the cricket alone clearly isnt enough to keep a decent amount of the NRL/AFL audiences interested enough to keep the subscription active. With the summer options being reasonably limited, another tilt at the A-League kind of makes sense
To my mind there are only really three realistic options in this regard - stay with Ten/P+ or move to either Stan or Optus. Noting that moving is likely to fragment the local rights with Ten/P+ seemingly retaining the national team’s rights as well as holding the rights to our chosen confederation.
The A-Leagues are in a really awkward position here - they’re going to struggle to get terrestrial FTA coverage (I think the best they can hope for is free via streaming, kayo freebies, or on 9now if they choose stan as examples) and I’d imagine any prospective broadcaster is going to want some level of assurance around the future of the APL (or a plan for a successor).
I could realistically see these rights not going to market if the APL and Ten/Paramount were able to come to a mutually acceptable extension agreement.
Whatever happened to that idea of shifting the Supercars season to be over Summer? Feel like that fits the Foxtel rights portfolio better than another play into football.
I reckon that Kayo just need to push yearly subs at a discount to try and lock people in year round, I don’t think their return on any other sports rights investment could make more than it would cost them.
As for the A Leagues I wonder if Apple TV+ might be an outside chance here? Not sure if they could get worldwide rights, but their dabbles into sport are interesting, and they’d be one to easily absorb the cost…