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Seven, Foxtel win AFL rights

The AFL has confirmed the details of its 2012-2016 broadcast rights, awarded jointly to Seven, Foxtel and Telstra at $1.25b.

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The AFL has confirmed the details of 2012-2016 broadcast rights, awarded jointly to the Seven Network and Foxtel / Austar.

Seven will have the rights to a minimum of four matches per round plus Finals, the Brownlow Medal and the Grand Final. In NSW, Qld and ACT games will played live on 7mate. In Victoria and Tasmania Friday night games will now be live, with a 30 minute delay in SA and a “reduced delay” in WA. Better Homes and Gardens will be moving where necessary.

Saturday night and Sunday arvo will be live. Saturday arvo games will be live in NSW, ACT, Qld but delayed in Vic, SA, WA and Tas.

Seven would not confirm if games would be in HD.

Outside Victoria all state-based teams will be seen in their respective states on Free to Air.

All finals will be live in all states.

Foxtel will have rights to all 9 weekly games played live and uninterrupted in every state in HD, plus the Brownlow Medal except the Grand Final. Foxtel will also revive its dedicated AFL channel. It also gets live pre-season games.

Telstra gets live mobile and IPTV rights via T-Box for every weekly game.

The value of the rights is the $1.253 billion fee the league was aggressively pursuing.

The AFL will move the start times of some games, with Friday nights now 7:50pm AEST.

The deal was announced by AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick and CEO Andrew Demetriou. It included Seven Network CEO David Leckie and Foxtel’s CEO Kim Williams.

David Leckie said, “Today’s agreement between Seven and the Australian Football League will play a key role in driving the future development of Seven in a competitive market.

“It’s a win for Seven and also importantly for the millions of football fans who flock to our coverage on free-to-air television. We look forward to bringing this great game to all Australians on the Seven Network.”

Seven has not ruled out sub-licensing games, potentially with TEN.

Kim Williams added, “This is a great day for Australian sports fans who love the AFL because for the first time they will be able to see every game of the AFL live, get real choice over which network to watch their team on, and they’ll have the option of watching AFL games on their mobiles, personal computer, Microsoft Xbox 360 or Telstra T-box.”

The announcement follows an exit by the TEN Network from joint rights with Seven and a bid by the Nine Network.

The revamped Anti-Siphoning List allows for more use of multichannels by broadcasters, but does not require live broadcasts except for the Grand Final.

This post updates.

86 Responses

  2. Lachlan Murdoch should hang his head in shame. TEN has now lost AFL broadcasting. TEN’s AFL coverage has been great & now it’s lost because Lachlan (NRL) Murchoch is upset about recruiting James Warburton from seven network. All this tv politics will make TEN loose sponsors / advertisers.

  3. I have a Telstra T-Box now and enjoy the Bigpond AFL Channel on it now, so having the 9 games live via that will be great. Sure the T-Box had a few bugs to start with, however with software upgrades (to both the box and modem) it has worked non-stop for months (hardwired not WiFied) for me and I see no pixellation issues.

    Really the AFL had to go with Telstra, with all the hassles other Mobile Phone companies have had lately (Optus, Vodaphone especially), there was really no other choice. Plus when you get out to Rural Australia, Telstra is the only option if you want a service that works for Mobile coverage and ADSL 2.

    This will be a huge selling point for the T-Box all over Australia especially as I said in rural areas and being unmetered and no extra charges tops it off.

  4. Hope Channel 10 can buy one game from 7 on Saturday night. I enjoy watching Before the Game and then the match. Also hope Foxtel does not charge extra for the AFL Channel – but I’m not holding my breath.

  5. I think the most interesting development from today’s announcement is the fact that while Foxtel gets all 9 games live, it will not be putting Seven’s ads into its simulcast. So all 9 games will be live and uninterrupted.

  6. If there is a Monday night game introduced onto the fixture list, it won’t be on FTA. They already confirmed that Ch7’s games will Friday night, Sat arvo, Sat night, and Sunday afternoon, with all but the Saturday afternoon game live on FTA.

    That means if a regular Monday night game is introduced, it will be on Foxtel.

    Also, regarding HD, David Leckie kind of shirked the issue, but comments by Kim Williams may be illuminating on the matter… he said all Foxtel originated games will be in HD, and all FTA originated games will be upscaled by Foxtel into HD, implying that Seven will film them in SD.

  7. I agree with Ed, Telstra is the big winner for the least outlay. I just checked the Telstra website – I can buy a T-box outright for $299 and then (according to the Telstra guy at the press conference) can either pay an AFL season subscription or just pay-per-view for the games that I want to watch – (while he wouldn’t be drawn on pricing atm it should be alot less than the $60 per month (currently, but expect that to rise) that a new Foxtel basic + Fox sports subscription would cost me.

    I think Foxtel might be surprised how many people will go this route as I’m not interested in paying for all the other channels, but it would be cool to have access to all the games (even just on a pay-per-view basis when mates are around) plus the other benefits of the T-box (which I’m not fully across but this news has got me to the Telstra website within an hour!). Hopefully Telstra will keep their AFL pricing low, and recognise that it’s a way of locking in existing and new customers to their bigpond service.

  8. It is a lotta money for a local sport….and it is a very local sport, the interest in Brizzie and Sydney is virtually non-existant

    Q…for David….how are the tv co’s gonna make money out of this…..increase subscription costs or screw advertisers? Will it put pressure on them?

  9. Let’s hope Gallop pulls his finger out and does the same deal with the greatest game of all and has all 9 (assuming 2 new teams from 2013) games live and in HD on Foxtel. This would mean not having to watch nine again and would mean games aren’t delayed due to weddings that most of the planet don’t care about.

  13. Great, 5 more years of frickin McAvaney. What the hell is a ‘squeezy kick’?

    I would love to see foxtel introduce an AFL package for $30 per month with just AFL, nothing else. That’s all i’m interested in.

  15. I think this deal is actually a very good one except for the fact the AFL has sold out to PayTV. Murdoch got what he wanted. He pulled out with Seven and got his way, PayTV is the biggest winner here. Its ridiculous. The biggest loser in this deal again is SA and WA. At least everyone else gets Live AFL either on Seven or 7mate.

    I also recon BHG will move to Thursdays nationally now especially if it does well tonight. Surely Seven won’t jeopardise this show as it is one of their top rating shows for a Saturday night.

  17. @Bill Gates, I doubt Very much that Fox Sports AFL will be in the basic package, given that none of the other Fox Sports channels are included in the basic package.

    And the reason it didn’t work last time is because they had to air broadcast five channels (one for each state) for only 3 games, which they said wasn’t financially viable. Now they only have to broadcast 2 channels (SD and HD) for 9 games.

    @Jezza, the reason people would bother with foxtel when the T-box exists is because they might not want to put up with low-resolution, low-bitrate pixellated pictures.

  20. great news for friday night footy. a 7.50 start is perfect for a bit of pre-match info before the game. and BH&G is doing well at 7.30 thurs.
    i guess we’ll have to wait and see re HD in the southern states.
    so foxtel gets the brownlow now too! why?!
    has there been any word as to how much each put in? Foxtel must of had to increase its share by a lot to have access to all that!

  21. I hope Better Homes & Gardens doesn’t get ditched, it rates higher than AFL everywhere. Why bother with ch7 or foxtel when the telstra-tbox will deliver. I agree with Ed Telstra wins.

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