They famously sued virtually everyone else in 2002 as well when they didn’t get their way with that rights deal, so they have plenty of form in this area even beyond cricket.
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If Paramount dont try and match it, you’ve got to wonder whether there is a real future with them owning 10
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10 need to more than match it to be successful in gaining the rights. They need to add a “risk with going to 10” premium. Their minimum bid needs to be 600m per season. Probably need to go as high as 610-620m to actually guarantee.
These useless pissweak bids aren’t going to motivate anyone going with 10.
Bev and Jared need to be begging Paramount Global for more funds.
But it looks like it’s all too late. With all these leaks and the nonsense from 7/fox it would seem they’ve bamboozled and confused the AFL to go with a sub par deal that does nothing to grow revenue or support grassroots and the needs of the fans.
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Paramounts bid just isn’t high enough to get a look in. If they want it, they will need to run it at a loss over 5 years.
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Money isn’t always the solution, and 10 begging, borrowing and stealing just to get the rights if it doesn’t make commercial sense to be able to monetize it won’t do them well in the long run.
Also, as @bacco007 said:
It did in the days when Jen Kyte read the Sunday 6pm bulletin, I give you that.
Seven, and thus the Seven/ Ten bid, did have the last offer clause back then too. It was always a very real possibility they’d come in over the top at the end.
Hopefully 10/P+ can do something similar here but it is much less likely.
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Disappointed Amazon isn’t involved.
Amazon produces documentaries for the AFL and will broadcast Thursday Night Football for the NFL in the States exclusively starting in season 2022/23.
Streaming is the way of the future for sports broadcasting around the world.
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And you know this because you are Bev McGarvey?
I doubt they really want to pay overs though - the risk is that there is a tipping point between where upping the bid over in order to overcome the 10 effect will result in them paying over its real value.
I really wonder how autonomous 10 is around decision making too - I get why head office is involved in a deal of this size, but since Paramount has owned 10 you just get the feeling that they’ve taken some ability to make decisions away locally which could make it incredibly hard to convince people who have no understanding of the local market and culture.
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Feel like too much is being made of the use of ‘key’ - especially considering the same article where that term was used explicitly reported that Seven wanted full access to their matches.
Think what will happen is Seven will be able to stream all matches they produce on 7Plus (provided they air on TV in the applicable state) but they wouldn’t be able to stream Fox produced games that they air outside VIC.
Few points about that. Firstly, we don’t know whether Seven will get the same amount of additional games on top of their usual timeslots or if they’ll get more or less.
Secondly, the thing about the additional games allotment under the current deal is it encompasses both public holiday games as well as 5-6 Thursday Night games. If you look though at the number of home-and-away games Seven will produce this year, they will have aired more additional games then the rights deal called for:
- Wednesday Night: 1 (Season Opener)
- Thursday Night: 10 (Rounds 1 - 5 & 13 - 17)
- Friday Afternoon: 1 (Good Friday Appeal afternoon game)
- Friday Night: 22
- Saturday Night: 23
- Sunday Afternoon: 16
- Sunday Night: 1 (ANZAC Day Eve)
- Monday Afternoon: 3 (Easter Monday, ANZAC Day & Queens Birthday)
- TOTAL: 77
What the above figures highlight is if Thursday Night Football becomes a staple of the fixture, the AFL are going to have to find another window where Seven can air a handful of games if it doesn’t want the 2025+ rights deal to be the second long-term rights deal (remembering that Seven went from 4 to 3.5 games a round when the current rights deal began in 2017) which results in a decrease in the number of FTA games.
It really is - as I said previously:
It’s not that at all - you’ve merely just described how broadcast rights negotiations work when there’s more than one network/platform involved.
A recent example which highlights that is the massive rights deal that the Big Ten conference announced a few days ago with Fox, CBS and NBC/Peacock. Part of the negotiations involved three networks needing to work out how games selections will work for college football considering each will have a ‘feature’ window (Fox at 12pm ET followed by CBS at 3:30pm ET and NBC in primetime) to air games every Saturday of the season:
Fox will carry 24-32 football games per season during the agreement, while NBC will carry 14-16 games on its linear network and eight games per year on Peacock. Beginning in 2024, CBS will carry 14-15 Big Ten games per season.
The Big Ten and Fox will coordinate a selection order for games.
“We’re incredibly comfortable with the way the picks will work,” NBC Sports chairman Pete Bevacqua told ESPN. “We know we’re going to have great, meaningful, important games in prime time every Saturday night. We’ll work closely with Fox and CBS and the Big Ten. There’s a real system of how it works in terms of picks, so we all get great games.”
If it does happen, there are two ways that ‘Super Saturday’ could work (and it’s not really clear which one is the one either Fox is pushing for or is the one that could happen):
- Foxtel produces all Saturday games and therefore no games will air on FTA in Victoria. However, NSW, QLD, SA and WA viewers would still be able to see their local teams (either live or delayed) on Seven/7mate.
- Foxtel gets exclusive rights to all Saturday home-and-away games and they won’t be shown on FTA in any fashion.
To be honest, I can’t see the second happening for two main reasons. Firstly, it would likely result in an incredibly messy and illlogical to explain situation whereby ‘home state protection’ (ie; non-VIC viewers being able to watch games featuring their local teams) would apply for Sunday games but not for Saturday games. Secondly, the AFL rebutted Foxtel the last time they made a similar push because of the importance they placed on home state protection:
It’s partly why it took until December 2020 for Foxtel to agree to a two-year extension on their rights agreement whereby Seven agreed to an extension in time for the 2020 season resuming in June:
As such, think the first option I outlined is the more likely ‘Super Saturday’ model to be enacted if it does occur.
AFL is too much of a premium product for Kayo/Foxtel to be putting live games in front of the paywall.
That’s mostly because Paramount (despite the frenzy media blitz early in the negotiating process) has seemingly had a “one foot in, one foot out” mindset (i.e; while they’ve been interested in acquiring full rights, they haven’t gone hard after doing just that) while Nine/Stan’s interest has been lukewarm at best.
If either/both of them (or another platform altogether) decided to make an genuinely aggressive push for the rights, we would be having a very different conversation right now.
If Seven & Fox’s offer is the best financial offer on the table (and assuming the recent reporting is accurate about that being the case), it’s clearly not ‘sub par’ because another party has not been willing to offer more money.
It would only be ‘sub par’ if there’s an objectively better offer on the table and the AFL are ignoring that in order to remain with the incumbents. If that was the case, clubs would rightly be ropeable because the AFL would be leaving money on the table.
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This is an exceptionally good post^.
Absolutely - and unlike buying rights to foreign sports, there’s an element of a partnership when you ink with a local entity.
What can you offer beyond the $$?
Seven can point to their deep news coverage as growing the game, with ample reporters in every state and a news operation actually presented in state. Also gives them exclusives on team news and the like. Fox can do the same with their channel and panel shows.
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I had been thinking about this factor as well during this week. Both Seven and Foxtel have fully fledged News services for coverage and dedicated websites for articles, as does Nine in the form of WWOS.
It doesn’t help that most of the efforts by 10’s previous Director of News Ross Dagan during 2018 through to 2019 to help rebuild from the ruins of the News service in the early 2010s, was further gutted as a result of the ViacomCBS re-merger and reorganisation in 2020.
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That is generally a cost when you end up being owned by overseas conglomerates.
I think we could end up somewhere between the two above scenarios:
Foxtel produce all Saturday games, with the exception of the Dreamtime Game and Anzac Day (if it falls on a Saturday).
Therefore no Saturday FTA games air in VIC with the above exceptions.
All NSW/QLD team games still air live on FTA in their home markets as per now.
For SA/WA teams, Foxtel can choose six Saturday games per team that will be fully exclusive to Fox and not be simulcast on FTA. This cannot include Showdown/Derby matches which must be on FTA in home markets.
The remaining 16 games of each team will be simulcast live on FTA in home markets as per now.
To help Crows/Power/Eagles/Dockers fans acclimatise to the change all members of these clubs should receive a Free 6 month Kayo subscription for the first year of the deal.
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Or delayed like they are currently.
I do think games of SA/WA teams produced by Fox won’t be exclusive to Fox but the amount of delayed games on 7 will most likely increase
I’m all for Number 1 tbh, some Fox Footy exclusivity couldn’t hurt given their match production and commentary quality is noticeably higher than 7’s is, and in the context of a huge match like a Showdown, Derby or something similar to what we saw in Round 15 during this season, I’d be more than happy to pay for that.
Like I’ve said before, if Fox do manage to land 5 games, they need to improve their commentary roster and Post game programming because this year has been shocking for both, you can’t have the same commentators in the same time-slots/games each week like they are now, variety is a good thing!
Delayed games? It’s not the 1990s anymore. The AFL need to just rip the band aid off, SA/WA fans are no longer going to get to see every game their team plays on FTA. They’ve had a free ride long enough.
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If Saturday becomes Fox exclusive, then to get close to 77 or around that number of games then, Sunday 3:20 on 7 has to be there for all rounds including the bye rounds
If it is similar to this year then 7 might have only
23 Thursday,
23 Friday,
16 Sunday
- +5 other blockbuster games
For total of 67 games on 7.
They could have this and also add some Sunday night games to make up the numbers if needed.
Play them in Perth at 5.10pm local time which is 7.10pm AEST.
Seven can choose to air them on the main channel or 7mate if they decide other programmes take precedence.
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