Optus Sport

Television Subscription and International
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Optus securing Australian rights to transmit Barclays FA Women’s Super League

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Optus Sport has announced it has scored the exclusive live rights to transmit the top tier of English women’s football for the next three years in Australia.

After producing the most comprehensive coverage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup ever seen in Australia, Optus Sport has strengthened its investment in women’s football by streaming the Barclays FA Women’s Super League (FA WSL) from Sunday November 17.

The deal continues Optus’ commitment to elite top-level football and will see Optus Sport broadcast approximately 50 live matches a full season and around 40 fixtures of the underway 2019/20 season.

Fans can enjoy must-watch match highlight compilations on Optus Sport, including the popular mini matches, as well as games on-demand for up to 30 days after first transmission.

Tom Gracey, Senior Broadcast Manager at the FA said, “We are delighted to partner with Optus Sport in a historic deal that will showcase the Barclays FA Women’s Super League to viewers across Australia.

“This is our first deal in the Asian region and demonstrates the ever-increasing global appeal of the league. We commend Optus for being at the vanguard of elevating and broadcasting more top-level women’s football.

“The popularity of women’s football is at an all-time high and this agreement is a fantastic opportunity for viewers across Australia to enjoy the skills, excitement and competitiveness that the Barclays FA Women’s Super League has to offer.”

Optus’ Head of TV and Content Corin Dimopoulos said Optus remained focussed on helping grow women’s football and inspire the next generation.

“We are proud to be Australia’s home of the Barclays FA Women’s Super League and look forward to growing interest in and sharing the league with our expanding base of Optus Sport customers,” said Mr Dimopoulos.

Alicia Ferguson, former Matilda and Optus Sport Expert, added, “It is really exciting Optus Sport has secured the rights. Optus Sport will not only be making more football available to Australian viewers, but importantly, increasing the visibility of women’s sport.”

The Barclays FA WSL joins a slate of premium football content on Optus Sport, including exclusively live coverage of every Premier League, UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League match and Optus Sport’s new in-house, live 90-minute football show, Scores on Sunday, hosted on rotation by Mel McLaughlin, Richard Bayliss and Niav Owens and featuring some of Australia’s best pundits including Heather Garriock, Mark Schwarzer, John Aloisi and Alicia Ferguson.

OPTUS SPORT WSL PROGRAMMING

Optus Sport’s official coverage of the FA WSL kicks off with a bang when Manchester City take on West Ham, Sunday November 17.
Details of Optus Sport’s opening round of live matches include:
17 November 2019 - Manchester City v West Ham - 11.30pm AEDT
18 November 2019 - Chelsea v Manchester United - 1am AEDT
18 November 2019 - Tottenham v Arsenal - 2am AEDT
18 November 2019 - Liverpool v Everton - 2am AEDT

BARCLAYS FA WOMEN’S SUPER LEAGUE

12 teams make up England’s largest full-time women’s league, including current champions Arsenal Women FC, who last season were guided to their first ever FA WSL title win since 2012 by former Australian soccer player and Melbourne City A-League assistant coach, Joe Montemurro.
Founded in 2011, the FA WSL consists of: Arsenal Women FC, Birmingham City Women FC, Brighton & Hove Albion Women FC, Bristol City Women FC, Chelsea FC women, Everton Ladies FC, Liverpool FC Women, Manchester City Women FC, Manchester United FC, Reading FC Women, Tottenham Hotspurs Women FC and West Ham United Women FC.
In 2018/19, the FA WSL season became Europe’s only fully professional women’s league.

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Interesting, as I thought I read someone posting on this site that Rugby was impressed with the Ten coverage of the Melbourne Cup and that supposedly gave an indication that Rugby would go with Ten.

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The interesting bit in that article is the revelation that Optus actually outbid Foxtel for the Rugby World Cup rights but World Rugby decided to go with Foxtel. As such, them picking up the Rugby Australia rights isn’t a massive shock when viewed in that context

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Rugby was in real trouble and this just compounds it

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and did I not say “watch this space” that Optus and Ten are looking at doing deals.

Who knows what the FTA will look like :slight_smile:

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oh just stop it.

Fox Sports has always been the issue with Rugby by not allowing FTA (Seven or Ten or even Nine) to do more with it over the years.

Typical News Corp behaviour is to neglect once they have something and then scream like a petulant child when someone else is playing with what they think is their toy.

Just wait till News Corp loose NRL and see what happens, will the old man do an another temper tantrum and reform Super League? do not rule it out.

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Do you live in a parallel universe? The game’s governance has serious issues, it’s leadership is poor and the game at a professional level has progressively got worse with little hope in sight. It’s handling of the Folau situation is an ongoing sore that may cost the game plenty, not to mention crowds and ratings are down across both super rugby and the tests. None of this is particularly new and as the article says, brings into question RA’s ability

SANZAR could disappear after 2025 - which is possibly a good thing, removing Japanese involvement in Super Rugby was short sighted for the development of the game

Regardless of who gets the rights, having one major player withdraw their bid does nothing to help the sport improve their return on the rights - Optus potentially pick up a bargain, all though at the risk that it won’t draw eyeballs beyond the diehard fan

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I would love to see News Corp re-open Super League, knowingly when they have lost a major footy code in the country.

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In NZ, cricket is going to Spark Sport after this season. The telco has the rights to all cricket including the Domestic summer, all BlackCaps men’s and women’s internationals and the T20 Super Smash.

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I spell danger

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NZ cricket fans can’t watch their team play in this scenario with their favourite summer sport off Sky next summer. Sky are not in a good financial state at all

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They can still watch domestic cricket - they’ll just have to do it via another platform (Spark) & channel (TVNZ for selected Twenty20 matches)

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It’s Test and ODI cricket that will not be on TVNZ. TVNZ will still air the first match of the T20 series, and selected Super Smash matches.

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The Australian is reporting that Foxtel offered $20 million for the television rights which Rugby Australia declined and Foxtel then withdrew its offer, so Rugby Australia then started negotiations with Optus.

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At the moment, the SANZAR is a huge mess. It’s organisastion is very poor and corrupt. Unfortunately Super Rugby is not working–crowd number figures have dwindled, lack of promotion, TV audience numbers have declined fast. The TV rights deal is a disaster. TO have all the games shown on Pay TV with limited promotion of the game is not going to help ratings. In 2017, SUper Rugby dropped two South African franchises (Cheetahs and Kings) and one Australian team (Force). Super Rugby is in financial trouble and it is not viable.
SANZAR is not looking very good especially in Australia. I still couldn’t believe the way Australia is at the moment. Lots of controversies including The sacking of Wallabies player, Israel Folau has shocked AUstralia. And now, the Wallabies cannot perform well against high-performed Countries especially the All Blacks and the Springboks. This was being reflected where the Wallabies haven’t won the Bledisloe Cup since 2002. In October, following the Wallabies loss to England in the QF of RWC in Japan, coach Michael Cheika resigned. Australian Rugby Union is in a massive mess this year with the feud between MIchael Cheika and CEO Raelene Castle last month. Fans are turning off Rugby in droves this year. The bottom line is if drastic measures are not taken seriously, SANZAR will fold.

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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/foxtel-gives-televised-rugby-the-punt/news-story/c0bd1eb2f6b9e600bb9df18b6162b361

There is a lot of inaccuracies in this article by the Australian. Clearly it’s just a news Corp spin piece to make rugby Australia look bad because they aren’t playing nice with foxtel.

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wow, imagine that … a News Corp property looking after its own property and then publishing the article as news, what the word for “nepotism” in this situation again?

lol if you have read other articles the CEO of Fox Sports is clearly saying to “B” level sports “the gravy train is over” from their perspective, well I would hope so as there model was simply not going to make them any money and now that Fox Sports is part of Foxtel and Foxtel is partially owned by Telstra all that information is released and that makes News Corp look stupid (well that is not hard to do in the 1st place).

Foxtel has no way to make $417 million in payments without News Corp bailing them out to pay the interest payment, as a reminder Sports Vision back in 1998 fell with a debt level of just $78 million … granted that was 21 years ago but think about it for a moment … the creditors should seek orders to wind up Foxtel but while the old man is around it’s safe but there is now a compromise position where it has to cut back on a lot of things and Rugby Union is just one of about 10 sports that are all of a sudden “B” level sports.

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Rugby has pretty well always been a “B” level sport in this country - admittedly its done extremely well out of subscription tv here, but it was in a time where subscription sports were basically a collection of “B” level domestic sports. It also helped that News owned the tv rights across the southern hemisphere for a long time as well

if the creditors are basically News, there are likely to be tax reasons accounting reasons why you wouldn’t, Foxtel operates as a going concern.

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Actually the creditors would be the sporting bodies that have contract in place with that company.

Like I said in the Ten Sport thread Fox Sports has issues with SC Media to the point where Ten had to prop them up.

As for Rugby Union its a national sport, yes they have issues however that is due to stupid people in management positions that are well out there depth .

The 1st thing Rugby Union should do is ask the Commonwealth Govt to put Super Rugby on the anti-siphoning list to force FTA to make offers for all Australian based games, however due to News Corp being the (insert any insult you want here) they are to protect their business in any anti-competitivite manner they sit for Rugby Union has languish, thankfully they don’t have their hands on Club Rugby.