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Conroy backs down on anti-siphoning clause

No deal done on the government's 2010 plans to ensure the best AFL and NRL games remain on Free to Air.

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2013-06-18_0130The government’s plans to ensure the best AFL and NRL matches remain on Free to Air television, first signalled with the Anti-Siphoning revamp in 2010, has been abandoned by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, according to The Australian.

Conroy had originally flagged that the best matches would be determined by an agreed industry mechanism to ensure the best games remained on FTA. It was a move supported by Seven and Nine, but opposed by the AFL and NRL who wanted more flexibility about which games would be shown on Pay TV.

The changes have been the subject of a formal review, two draft bills and a Senate inquiry but has never been legislated. Senator Conroy resumed talks with broadcasters three months ago to revive the changes and then moved last Friday to add the bill to the agenda this week.

But he reportedly backed away from the changes yesterday ahead of the final fortnight of the current parliament.

It follows the Minister also failing to pass all his media reforms several months ago.

9 Responses

  1. I say give all the games to Fox. Foxtels afl coverage is far superior to Sevens. Might be time to upgrade my package to see games in glorious high definition.

  2. Andrewb- I agree. I recently reconnected foxtel for live sport, NRL in particular. Yet still as a fan I’m supposed to be happy with not having the option to watch all games live. Ch9 are ruining it for many people. NRL haven’t really thought about promotion of the game the fact only one game is on FTA before bed time for alot of kids. And it’s delayed.
    AFL have the far superior deal with the dedicated channel. NRL really needs to look at this, which unfortunately won’t be for another four years now at least.

  3. Certainly for AFL, which is miles ahead of NRL in terms of thinking about the future, I think this subject will rear it’s ugly head again when the current TV deal concludes and the AFL will produce and televise the games themselves. What will FTA get then?

  4. You won’t get the games live in HD until every state has switched off their analogue signals.

    Plus, they can’t charge their advertisers the same kind of premium if the games aren’t shown on the primary channel, so it doesn’t make financial sense either. Until they can switch their primary channels onto the HD signal, which they can’t while there is a chance people haven’t switched to digital, it won’t happen.

  5. So some of the so called best NRL games we don’t necessarily get them live and we don’t get them in HD.

    And if one of my teams are the second NRL game on Friday or the Sunday afternoon game – I have to stay away from social media while watching… Sorry – but not all of us sit glued to anything on TV these days without being on a second or third screen at the same time. If I see the result ahead of the broadcast on Nine, then usually won’t bother watching.

    At least with AFL you get them all live…

  6. NRL on Fox Sports: 5 games live (in a normal week). All available in HD
    NRL on Nine: 1 game live per week. 2 delayed. None in HD

    Please can we move on to this – all live, all in HD whether on Nine or Fox.

  7. I’d be interested to know the formula or rankings that would have been used to determine which game was better than others.

    With SOO, Tests and finals, these are all determined to be higher quality games due to the representative nature or the fact that these are the top 8 teams after 26 rounds. So how the federal government was going to rank these games (and would we have seen say a Saturday night game or Monday game on Nine because the mechanism would have overridden broadcast contracts), we’ll never know now.

    Despite having some ordinary games on Nine this year, I am preferring the 22 round set draw and would prefer that over any mechanism.

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