The Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race was indeed produced externally with Seven Sport via Eddie McGuire’s Jam TV. Going off production enders at the very end of the telecast at 4pm edt.
There was also a tribute to somebody who had passed away, didn’t recognise him, possibly an employee at Jam TV or Seven.
The broadcast was however copyright to “Visit Victoria”, the state’s tourism arm, who perhaps had overall oversight of the television operations to their event.
The women’s race from yesterday already has the full 5 hour replay on 7Plus, expect so too for the men’s shortly.
Leading Seven’s play-by-play coverage is Kevin Burkhardt, joined by seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady, with Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi on the sidelines.
I wonder if it will be both the Fox graphics and commentary (as per prior years), or whether Seven will have to take a feed with the Fox commentary over ‘world feed’ graphics (like they’ve had to do throughout this season). While the article would imply both graphics and commentary I don’t think we can be 100% certain until Monday rolls around.
I suppose the bean counters will crunch the numbers tomorrow and we’ll see…
Despite NFL’s popularity in Australia these days and audiences going up each year, it’d still be considered fairly ‘niche’ vs what other global and domestic sports achieve here and I’m guessing would come down heavily to sponsors/advertisers they can get interested, as well what it’s doing for network promotion and lead-in.
If Seven feel it’s becoming too expensive and not really being paid for commercially, as well as not really helping draw viewers to other programs namely Idol but also Chase, news, Home & Away, St Denis Medical, Ludwig, etc. Then they may even consider not renewing and no doubt other networks would be circling or at least interested.
I think whether Seven will renew the NFL deal will come down to getting access to the proposed regular season matches at the MCG. The first match will be part of 2026/27 NFL season.