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Broadcasters in final negotiations for AFL rights

Final bids for the 2012 - 2016 AFL rights are being made, with the AFL and Foxtel likely to be smiling whichever way the deal falls.

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Final bids for the 2012 – 2016 AFL rights are being made, with Nine to put in a bid with the the league today.

The AFL is chasing a $1 billion deal, well up on the existing $780 million.

News Limited notes that Nine has committed to live broadcasts from next year and will allow Foxtel to simulcast all of its matches.

If Nine doesn’t land the deal, the best it can hope for is that it pushed the price up, so that its competitors are hit in the pocket. Seven and TEN are understood to have a chance to better Nine’s deal.

Fairfax today says Seven has agreed to share Friday night football with Foxtel and agreeing that Foxtel would televise all nine home-and-away games live. Four would be simulcast on Free to Air.

Under the Seven / TEN plan, the Grand Final and Brownlow Medal would remain exclusive to Free to Air.

The Age reports Channel Seven, should it prove successful, will host Friday night football in a simulcast across Australia with Foxtel in an agreement which would see the two televising identical ads.

Seven, bidding on behalf of TEN, is believed to have put forward a $400 million bid with Foxtel to pay at least $500 million – more than double its previous rights fee. TEN is expected, but not certain, to continue its two Saturday games each week, but Seven has otherwise agreed to broadcast all four.

Yesterday during a Melbourne-Gold Coast clash Seven’s Bruce McAvaney asked Dennis Cometti,”Do you think we’ll be calling in 10 years’ time, Dennis?”

“We might not be calling next year, Bruce,” Cometti replied.

“Whoops,” McAvaney said.

  • Tagged with AFL

45 Responses

  1. Well think of it this way. If Seven lose the AFL then they will have the extra money to go after the Rugby League and Seven i believe would succeed as Nine wouldn’t have enough funds if they win the AFL bid. To be honest it doesn’t worry me in the slightest which might surprise you all but one thing i would hate to see is the NRL and AFL on the one network because i saw what that did last time that happened.

    I think the biggest crock is Foxtel gets the lot regardless. That is stupidity on the AFL’s behalf i recon.

  9. “Nine have committed to live broadcasts” – obviously they can’t in nsw and qld because they (presume) will have the nrl as well, so really, only sa and wa would be better off under 9, compared to 7 re friday nights (regardless of commentators!).

    If the AFL want to get more AFL broadcast into nsw and qld, they shouldn’t give it to ch9 because they have the nrl commitment. Although most of the time the games are delayed up there, they do have some games live or hr-delay, espicially if either swans or lions are playing, or finals – this can’t occur if 9 have nrl and alf!!!!

    plus who wants eddie commentating…

  10. Pity the simulcast rights are not going with whoever gets the Internet rights instead of Foxtel, like now with Bigpond there is an AFL Channel, which you can access via the T-Box or Website (same if it was iiNet Fetch Tv or similar).

    Would mean all the games could be live into all States via the Web and as is now if you are a Bigpond customer (same again for Fetch TV etc) it would be Unmetered and metered if not of course, with Internet TV being a growth industry, this should really be looked at as solution for all States (especially as the NBN rolls out).

    Time to really make Internet TV an option and something like the AFL or NFL rights could get it to be real competitive .

  11. Tim lane is spineless @Armchair Analyst. he walked out on a carlton game when they were getting pumped. he is way more biased that eddie will ever be. bruce dennis have been nothing short of horrendous that last 5 years

  13. @sam No they won’t be live in NSW / Qld. When they are shown live, they don’t rate. Take last Saturday nights game for example. 59,000 viewers in Sydney and 27,000 in Brisbane. A tv network simply cannot afford those numbers in primetime (and I suspect is a big part of the reason ten is usually fourth on Saturday)

    I wonder if this means that Ten / One are doing to make a big money over for the NRL? (especially if they lose AFL rights). A dedicated sports channel without AFL or NRL would be massive fail.

  14. @ Mr Chandler. I still enjoy Bruce “the special one” McAvaney and Dennis “centimetre Perfect” Commeti calling the game. At the very least they are not biased as Eddie. If i recall correctly when 9 gained the rights they initially employed Time Lane to call FNF along side Eddie and Tim resigned before the 2002 season was about to start because he thought that Eddie would be biased whenever Collingwood games were on FNF, and look what happened. 7 despite their arrogant decision not to broadcast FNF Live i still favour their commentators then anyon elses.

  15. It pi**es me off that so much money is handed over for the rights to AFL and Rugby League at the expense of drama and entertainment production. I really hope Nine win the bid because they’ll be the biggest loser in the long run. Would love to see them win and go bankrupt because they later find they can’t pay the greedy AFL. Nine can’t afford attractive, decent programming for their existing schedule. AFL is hardly going going to fill all the gaps and they can’t keep plugging holes with 2.5 Men and TBBT. If Seven win I expect drama production will suffer.

  17. In the recent stories and media analysis of this saga all i have heard is that nothing will change as far as the current broadcasters are concerned. The only thing which will is the price. I can definetly see why Foxtel would love to have all 9 matches so that they can boast about having all 9 games live every week so that they can increase their subscription revenue. Personally i dont believe that Foxtel should have any games but i know that is just wishful thinking. The best case scenario is that the 7 network retain the rights on Friday Nights and Ten cover Saturdays i would like to see some more choice for the viewers without pay tv. I thought it was interesting that Dennis Cometti replied “we might not be calling next year Bruce”, either A) Because 7 might loose the rights again or b) Dennis is going to retire from calling AFL on tv, i read an article which was published 3 years ago saying that this would be his last contract and at the end he will not be calling. If that happens and 7 somehow manage to retain the rights then they will have to find a replacement. All in all my tip is that 7 will keep the rights but not sure what Ten will get out of this considering they dont make much money on Afl. The only assurity is that no FTA broadcaster will have both NRL and AFL.

  18. Bella: According to The Age today, you will get the Friday night games live via foxtel into WA. I would suspect that it would be delayed on the FTA network.

    Personally, I would like to see Nine get the rights back. Regardless of your thoughts on the commentators, I personally think that Nine do a better job all round with their coverage.

    I might of mentioned this in a previous post, but dont discount Ten in this whole scenario. They are contractually obliged to bid with Seven… but that doesnt preclude them from remaining a rights holder if Nine win them. It would be likely that Nine may offload its Saturday games to Ten as has been the arrangement for the past 10 years. That said… if Nine was successful, you could almost guarantee that Ten will get little or no finals action.

    That said… we will know the result either this week or next. It will be interesting to see what happens.

  20. So as a Foxtel subscriber, I will be happy regardless of who wins (Well apart from the inevitable price rise to pay for the doubling in rights costs)

  21. come on 9 you can do it. i don’t want another 5 years of bruce, dennis, time watson, midget wrestling and the mega wall. 7 have set the game back to\when they games weren’t even on tv

  22. this is all very well- but the question remains- will NSW and QLD get Friday night games on FTA live ?? like on a secondary channel like 7mate or Gem in sydney – it looks to me like we will need foxtel- so nothing changes friday wise

  23. I wish Ten would get the right to show all games. They have the best coverage and the best commentators. Seven are pathetic because they fail to show games live. But while Nine would show it live, we’d be subjected to commentary from Eddie McGuire, James Brayshaw and Shane Crawford who are all terrible.

    Perhaps Nine, Friday nights, Ten for Saturday and Seven for Sundays would be best but that would never happen would it…

  25. Friday night football is still a problem here in Perth. We don’t get it until 8:30pm. It’d annoying that they don’t put it live on 7mate.

    We also get all the home games delayed as well. Though Foxtel have it live.

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