Asian Cup joint deal on FOX Sports, ABC.
Every game on FOX Sports and Socceroos games on ABC for the AFC Asian Cup, in Australia for the first time.
- Published by David Knox
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The AFC Asian Cup will come to Australia for the first time in 2015, with a broadcast deal between FOX Sports and ABC.
The Socceroos will kick off the 32-game tournament when they take on Kuwait on January 9th. 32 matches will be played in 23 days across five host cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Newcastle.
FOX Sports will broadcast every match Live, in HD, with no ad-breaks across the entire tournament plus the lead-in clash between the Socceroos and Japan, Live when they meet in Osaka on November 18.
A package of up to nine games, including all Socceroos games Live plus the Japan versus Australia friendly, will air on ABC. All ABC matches will also be made available streamed on iview, concurrent with the TV broadcast.
Pool matches and other Finals will be on delay following the FOX Sports live coverage.
ABC will also offer a nightly highlights show at 10pm while ABC Radio is also the official Radio Broadcaster.
Director of Television, Richard Finlayson, “We felt strongly that this significant sporting and cultural event should be made available to all Australians, and with additional support from the FFA, we were able to work out a deal with FOX Sports to release some key games.”
FOX Sports chief executive officer, Patrick Delany, “We have been a huge supporter and partner of football in Australia for the past 10 years and as the momentum of football has grown, we made a decision in good faith to allow the ABC to broadcast parts of the Asian Cup this summer. We agree that opening this monumental event to a new audience is something of value to all parties involved.”
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15 Responses
@Alessandro
I just read that too on the abc website. Apparently three matches will be on two hour delay. So disappointing. Viewers want live sport on free to air not two hour delayed sport.
According to the ABC website all of australias group stage matches are on a 2 hour delay
its good to see any sporting competition on FTA, even if only selective games are aired live, like here for the Asian Cup.
Am surprised to see the ABC pick this up (thought it would go to SBS). However, they did air the Basketball World Cup quite recently, and have been airing the W-League over the last two or so seasons.
Is Malcolm reading this? Probably. As most Australian households don’t buy Foxtel it’s good that this will be on FTA, especially ABC (or SBS).
@all – you would have hoped SBS would have gone truly live as they’ve recently started doing with the A-League. Makes a massive difference to their ratings too.
Live matches should always be a deal breaker for SBS moving forward, particularly if they have anti syphoning on their side.
that being said, soccer has the highest participation of any sport in Aus. Take a look at recent crowds and Foxtel figures and I think it’s safe to say they’ll become the biggest code in my lifetime – therefore, the next A-League tv deal will have a commercial FTA partner.
@oceanographer, really??? How does the AFC sit within our anti-syphoning legislation (especially given Australia is playing)?
ABC News’ report suggests that all semis and the final will be live on FTA, no matter who’s in them:
“ABC will broadcast live all Socceroos matches from the quarter-finals onwards. It will also show the tournament semi-finals and final live.”
Whether its on ABC or SBS, SD or HD – it shouldn’t really matter. All that matters is its on free-to-air where everyone can watch it which is a huge relief as it was all going to be exclusive to Foxsports before this deal with the ABC was reached.
I recall being caught twice by SBS and their “live” matches, which weren’t “live” at all, when I switched to ABC24 at half-time, only to see the final score. The “live” was on one hour delay (in NSW). If on similar delay I guess ABC will adorn it with their stupid “Recorded Earlier” graffiti?
SBS bid $700k and would have shown the games with no ads during play (which is the important bit). That would have been funded through advertising at no cost to taxpayers.
Instead the ABC has used taxpayer money to poach it from SBS who have long supported soccer in this country. Rumours are it cost $1.4m. And then they will claim they can’t fund Lateline.
The ABC will claim they will get a slightly higher audience, but that will only be because people won’t have the choice of watching what would have been on ABC1 otherwise. So it’s not a win for viewers.
Won’t be HD on ABC as they waste their HD channel on SD up-converted News.
If it had gone to SBS, there might have been a chance it would have been HD.
I’m a supporter of public television, but this really should of gone to SBS. You cant blame the FFA for securing the best deal, but SBS has built the game to where it is in Aus today, has the commentators and experience having been the broadcaster of all previous World Cups.
Are ABC trying to find work for their OB units who are probably damn expensive, with not all that much to do?
Finally some live socceroos matches.
ABC use this deal as a way to finally launch a windows phone iview app.
Just for clarification will the friendly match be live to? Does the streaming on iview include iview apps or just the pc site?
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Friendly match live on ABC yes.
It’s about time the Asian Cup was on free-to-air. The best news of the year. The ABC are to score some huge ratings particularly if Australia go far in this tournament. And finally we’ve got a live friendly game on FTA next month – the first live friendly since 2006.