Yes they can do their own commentary but they really shouldn’t be getting the rights at all.
If the AFL bend to these demands it’s going to be a disaster.
We really need a new broadcaster in all of this to rejuvenate the coverage and elevate the sport. Seven and fox have not innovated or actually done anything decent in terms of coverage.
As the story says, the NRL rights are Fox’s model.
The model that was largely set up when News owned half the NRL and got whatever it wanted.
The Fox Footy view is that its production – which is tailored for a more rusted-on AFL fan than Seven’s broader demographic – is superior to Seven’s and is thus more attractive for its subscribers.
I have a lot of gripes about Seven’s AFL coverage. However, I would argue Fox’s coverage isn’t that much better (and indeed in some aspects, it’s definitely worse than Seven’s).
Surely they can’t.
Both major ideas from Fox so far for the new deal ie Super Saturdays and exclusive WA/ SA matches, are just demonstrably bad for everyone bar Fox.
Hopefully the AFL are of that view as well and move in another direction.
Yeah that stood out to me as well. Fox vastly overestimating how good they actually are.
I would think 7 would much prefer 23 Thursday night games over Saturday night. Add every Friday night, Sunday 3.20pm plus public holiday football. You get very close to their current allotment of 77 home and away games.
So Fox seemingly want Saturday all to themselves?
Look how that turned out for the BBL?
The AFL need to be careful to not stuff themselves BBL style with no FTA exposure on a Saturday.
If the AFL want more money for the rights, they need to give Fox something in return. Why is a business trying to get a better deal a travesty?
The NRL has no FTA exposure on Saturdays and it seems to be doing alright.
This is not exactly true, Channel Nine has Saturday night coverage in the final six? rounds of the year as well as Magic Round.
there is NRL FTA exposure albeit last five or 6 rounds of home and away season.
That’s nothing compared to the majority of the season though. It’s not like it’s every single Saturday. It’s six out of how many months?
What a travesty it will be if Fox gets their grubby hands on more AFL. I am surprised that industry observers think it won’t be 10/Paramount
Because it isn’t good for the fans the actual customers. There’s better deals and money to be found elsewhere rather than kowtowing to Murdoch and their pathetic coverage.
What makes you think another broadcaster will do better though?
You’d think Super Saturday would be an odd play just as Fox already have that for the NRL - obviously there’s not a huge AFL/NRL overlap - but seems odd to put all their main exclusives into the same day for both codes.
Separate coverage is fine - though that would put further pressure on Seven and to a lesser extent radio, in terms of getting commentators to cover all those matches - the broadcast quality on both networks would degrade.
Perhaps the pay for there is letting Seven simulcast national games on their streaming platforms? Not having streaming rights is going to increasingly hurt Seven - and if they lose the exposure of the simulcast games - their total audience for their in game ads would fall further.
That’s probably a strength of an all Ten/Paramount bid - not having a race for the best commentators increasing costs.
fresh feel and new look to the game. Look at the BBL when it was on the 10 Network.
The article seems to contradict the recent one in The Australian by claiming 10/Paramount have made a bid for the entire rights.
I’m not buying this whole 10 will be amazing, let 10 have them notion. They aren’t the most stable option at the moment. The AFL will want its sport going to a network that has daily, regular viewers and 10 doesn’t have that.
Anyone is better than 7 and fox.
Look at how bad the Olympics and Comm games have been the last few cycles with 7. They’re terrible at the week to week coverage of the AFL and fox just looks overall cheap.