ESPN’s senior editor Australia and New Zealand, Stuart Randall, tweeted his thoughts of a possible A-League deal with ABC yesterday.
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The Australian is reporting that it is expected to be announced that the ABC will broadcast an A-League game at 5:00pm on Saturdays and a W-League game at 4:00pm on Sundays. The ABC could also possibly get the free-to-air rights to Socceroos and Matildas matches.
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It’s great news that the ABC is set to regain W-League rights. Getting FTA rights to Socceroos and Matildas matches will be a bonus. But what about Socceroos’ World Cup qualifying matches?
Also, if the ABC is to show the A-League, the kick off has to be right at 5pm to allow for long injury time in the second half and for the ABC to show the 7pm news in NSW, VIC, ACT and TAS.
that would be the 3rd FTA broadcaster in… 4 years? for A-League
The AFC controls those rights so they are dealt with separately
The FFA’s two-year deal with the ABC has been officially announced:
The key details:
Under the new agreement, 29 live matches will be broadcast on ABC TV and iview (5pm on Saturdays) throughout the Hyundai A-League 2019/20 Season and, for the Hyundai A-League 2020 Finals Series, delayed broadcasts of one Elimination Final, one Semi Final and the Hyundai A-League 2020 Grand Final. Fourteen (14) Rounds of the Westfield W-League 2019/20 Season (4pm on Sundays) and the entire Westfield W-League 2020 Finals Series will also be broadcast live on ABC TV.
The ABC will also broadcast every Caltex Socceroos match to which FOX SPORTS, on Foxtel carries rights.
The upcoming Westfield Matildas international friendlies against Chile at Bankwest Stadium (Saturday 9 November) and Coopers Stadium (Tuesday 12 November) will be broadcast live on ABC along with next year’s Women’s Olympic Football Tournament Asian Qualifiers.
Frankly, the delayed and limited coverage of the A-League finals means this deal is a step backwards compared to the 10/Fox arrangement where at least all finals matches were shown live
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What I don’t get about all of this is that Fox was saying they want to get out of doing all HAL games yet they play hard ball and ten misses out
I don’t understand why three A-League finals have to be broadcast on delay, especially the grand final.
However, the FTA deal means for the first time, ABC will have radio AND TV rights to 29 live matches and all A-League finals. ABC News Radio, ABC Grandstand Digital and ABC Listen app will again broadcast every A-League match live this season.
ABC’s view on the FTA deal:
It will also mean the Socceroos’ next two rounds of World Cup qualifiers will be broadcast live and free across the ABC and SBS.
Well no grand final live is a failure. Terrible deal. The FFA is doing its best to kill soccer. It’s woeful to see a sport going backwards rather than trying to get new fans.
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Apart from no grand final live, the ABC deal is slightly better than the previous 10 deal, because the A-League will now be shown live on main channel and in HD.
Did the commercial networks spend all their cash on the premium sports (AFL, NRL and Cricket)?
This is why second tier sports like NBL and A-league are now on SBS and ABC this summer.
I think that is the big issue here, no money to go around and networks blew it all on the premium sports. The next deals for AFL, NRL and Cricket will be less. They’ll only be saved by Google, Amazon or Facebook purchasing a slice of the rights.
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I’m not convinced they will (with the possible exception of cricket, on the basis they are able to secure some international rights).
I think we’ve seen the peak
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In just one tweet I’ve seen more promotion than what Ten dished up.
Not really.
There’s no rights fee for the NBL. They’ve done a deal to maximize free to air in a revenue sharing deal with SBS and ESPN.
What hamstrung soccer is the existing deal with fox. There was already a rights deal in place there and they weren’t willing to let go of any steaming rights when renegotiating the free to air component.
So not really they have no money it’s just the way these deals were structured but ultimately any sport that has a deal with fox ends up killing their markets and losing fans.
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Jeebus, delayed finals.
Will ABC be doing their own commentary? Or have their own graphics? Or will it be a straight Fox feed?
How much money is this costing the ABC?
Hopefully the ABC is paying nothing.
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I thought Fox wanted to offload production? Is the ABC producing this one weekly game?
Just an awful deal for FFA, the clubs bad game in general.
Fox Sports have held the game the ransom.
I can reveal the reason why Nine walked away was due to not having access to their FTA games for Nine Now, Fox Sports were not going to give up exclusive streaming rights for Kayo, so blame Fox Sports for this debacle that is going to virtually put the game on life support for the next two years.
As for what will happen? ABC will simply take the Fox Sports feed however it will have ABC overlays for the FTA version, it will be very similar to how SBS and Fox Sports worked when A-League was on SBS 2 on Friday nights.
An unconfirmed report is that ABC is paying ZERO for A-League (inter nations are different) access and that FFA bent over backwards to get ABC by reducing the fee that Fox Sports pays.
Like I said above this is an awful deal for teams.
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Just bizarre that the FFA have kept themselves involved despite spinning off the A-League. Clubs should be ropable here.
however it should be noted that the current rights deal is with FFA and Fox Sports and as such any renegotiated deal goes through FFA 1st until that deal expires which I think ends 21/22 season.
Remember the only reason why this happened was due to Fox Sports wanting to somehow reduce their commitments while still keeping the same level of content for Fox Sports.
The issue is now that Foxtel is basically a dead duck with NBN (internet) basically allowing people to access what ever they want without the need for “pay TV boxes” which is why things like Foxtel Now (internet streaming) and the more important “Kayo Sports” are the future (and in that a very limited future) for companies like Foxtel/Fox Sports, Optus showed them the way, granted the Optus experience has not been smooth but it has shown that you don’t need satellite or cable pay TV boxes to deliver quality content to the viewer direct, the FTA networks have finally figured this out also via their online streaming platforms (iView, On Demand, 7plus, Nine Now & Ten Play) which is why Fox Sports did not want to give an inch even something they clearly do not want to broadcast.
I fear for Supercars & Rugby Union, Fox Sports will hold them to ransom also all for Kayo Sports streaming.
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