God, I hope not. Though it doesn’t sound like Nine are interested in anyone from the Fox side based on the “fresh commentary team” line in one of the above SMH articles.
If that is true, then it will be hard for Nine to find former Wallabies players who will be interested to become expert commentators, given many of them are signed to Fox until the end of the current broadcast deal.
Huh? There’s plenty of players who aren’t affiliated with Fox. Drew Mitchell for one, Sonny Bill Williams another. But a fresh commentary team doesn’t mean not hiring anyone from Fox.
I also wonder if they might take the rights to the Aussie Rugby Show and put it on Stan, as well as hiring some of the talent on there.
Nine seem to like using their own talent so Fitzsimmons is probably a shoo-in to get a expert commentary role.
Ray Hadley is another one on the books who can and has done Rugby commentary for Nine in the past.
Which ends in just over a month, doesn’t it?
No mention (yet) on Peter FitzSimmons hosting/ commentating on any rugby union for Nine. So he’ll probably just stick to Sports Sunday for now.
Seven’s James Warburton has told The Australian that Nine should not have bought the rugby union television rights.
Sounds like someone is jealous over a better deal than his network’s cricket.
Why say anything? Better to work on Seven’s problems than worry about deals with a sport that the network didn’t seem to have an interest in.
Don’t think the network that overspent on cricket, and without any ODIs, should really be saying anything.
I get complaining about driving up prices when it comes to the tier 1 sports to block 7 from being able to come for 9s sport.
But 9 making a legitimate play for more sport like rugby that actually want to acquire isnt “driving up the price”
Sean Maloney could be the main match commentator for Nine. More details about the other commentators Nine is believed to have talked to:
Gordon Bray is not mentioned.
Most of the reaction to Warburton’s comments are ignoring the substance of it - he’s right in that rugby union is simply the wrong sport to be the linchpin to launch a sports streaming service because its domestic competitions pull low ratings. By comparison, Optus Sport launching with the Premier League was really smart because it’s a league that has a massive fanbanse in Australia. Likewise, Spark Sport in NZ using last year’s Rugby World Cup as the headline property for its first year made perfect sense in a rugby-obsessed country.
Another point - there’s no incentive to subscribe to Stan Sport if you’re a casual rugby/sports viewer considering Nine will be airing all of the biggest games on TV. In the article littlegezzybear pulled the quote from, Warburton argues that Nine/Stan should have instead gone after Supercars and I would tend to agree with that. Not only is it a sport which rates much better but it offers content for most of the year compared to rugby union which is concentrated around a few months each year.
Warburton’s comments about rugby union was part of a longer interview which touched upon a number of other things (Hugh Marks departure from Nine, Seven’s 2021 plans and the network’s financial position). As such, I’m guessing he was asked about it rather than him deciding to bring it up in order to have a ‘cheap shot’ at Nine.
You’d have to be really brave to invest big in Supercars the year before Holden vanish as a brand in Australia - putting the last nail in the Holden v Ford battle that sustained the competition’s biggest fans. If they were in similar realms of money, I’d certainly pick the Union rights.
Nine will obviously have to do more deals to increase the value - but I think both Tennis and Union fall into a spot where the people who are big fans of them are likely to be a more attractive demographic than Supercars would be targeted at.
Should be noted Warburton is invested in Supercars - he’ll always say Supercars is better than Rugby.
I think he missed the strategy of being on stan is still a revenue stream from higher income demographic. It is also bundled in with Tennis so there is a multisport offering. Dipping their toes in for bigger plays in the future.
I don’t think it’s right to compare Stan and Optus sport because you can already tell Nine and Optus have different strategies.
Optus Sport was a brand new streaming service that four years later, still only focuses on one sport. Stan Sport is an add on service to an existing one which has two sports with ambition for more before they’ve even launched.
I also doubt a casual viewer of any sport would be willing pay money to watch something they’re not big followers of
My point isn’t that rugby union is a ‘bad’ property for Stan Sport to have but rather it’s not suited to being THE main selling point (as things currently stand) to try and get people to subscribe to the service.
The reason why I mentioned Optus/Spark Sport wasn’t to compare them to Stan Sport but rather to make the point that both have able to launch successfully because they had a high-profile league/event they could use to attract subscribers. In contrast, I doubt rugby union can do the same for Stan - especially considering the number and types of games that will be simulcasted on Nine.
Has Spark been a success tho. There’s been recent rumblings they are thinking of getting out of sport even before a ball was bowled in their cricket deal. Recently coming to an agreement with Sky with their streaming service.