Grand brawl over AFL sponsors

Channel Seven has denied the network has tried to poach sponsors from Network TEN in the lead up to the AFL Grand Final.

Seven’s Sydney sales director Adam Elliott said the network sold most of its finals commercial time in year-long or finals series deals.

This year Seven has the AFL Grand Final, as part of a rotating deal between Seven, TEN and the AFL. The Australian today reports that Seven has attempted to poach TEN’s AFL finals advertisers with the promise of a presence in the grand final telecast.

“Seven is offering TEN’s AFL sponsors access to Seven’s grand final and final series on Seven,” MindShare Melbourne managing partner Mark McCraith said. “I’d be pretty pissed off if I’ve sponsored Seven’s coverage all year with the expectation I’d get my spots in the grand final and here I find Seven’s offering good deals to TEN’s AFL sponsors,” he said.

“Seven has done the dirty on TEN but that’s the business.”

Seven is believed to be asking $120,000 for a casual 30-second spot in the AFL grand final. Advertisers are expected to spend an estimated $35 million to advertise in the telecasts of both the Australian rules and rugby league finals series on Seven, TEN and Nine over the next month.

Seven is estimated to have made revenues of about $18million from the finals series, while TENis thought to have pulled in about $8 million.

TEN national sports sales manager Wayne Lightfoot said many of the network’s advertisers were now “long-term partners for us” as the network was in its seventh year of AFL broadcasts.

“You’d expect that (Seven) would be talking to everyone,” Mr Lightfoot said. “It hasn’t affected us.

“We went to market at the start of the year trying to retain our volume share in terms of revenue,” he said. “We haven’t had any issues with any of our sponsors in terms of not having the grand final: they’ve supported us.”

Source: The Australian