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A-League, W-League deal for ABC.

ABC is FTA broadcaster of A-League, W-League, Socceroos and Matildas games for the next 2 years.


ABC has confirmed a deal with Football Federation Australia and FOX Sports that sees it become the official Free-to-Air Television Broadcaster partner of the A-League, W-League, Socceroos and Matildas for the next two years.

This will be the first time that the A-League will be broadcast on the ABC and also marks a return of the W-League.

Under the new agreement, 29 live matches will be broadcast on ABC TV and iview (5pm on Saturdays) throughout the A-League 2019/20 Season and, for the A-League 2020 Finals Series, delayed broadcasts of one Elimination Final, one Semi Final and the A-League 2020 Grand Final. Fourteen (14) Rounds of the W-League 2019/20 Season (4pm on Sundays) and the entire W-League 2020 Finals Series will also be broadcast live on ABC TV.

The ABC will also broadcast every Socceroos match to which FOX Sports carries rights.

The ABC’s Director of Regional & Local, Judith Whelan, said, “We are thrilled to welcome Australian football into the ABC family.

“The ABC has unrivalled reach into every corner of Australia, and we will be using that reach to help build the profile of football. We plan to use all our platforms to drive audiences to our coverage on ABC TV.”

“We have always been a big supporter of women’s sport in this country and will use every means possible to build the biggest audience we can for the W-League.”

The upcoming Matildas international friendlies against Chile at Bankwest Stadium (Saturday 9 November) and Coopers Stadium (Tuesday 12 November) will be broadcast live on ABC along with next year’s Women’s Olympic Football Tournament Asian Qualifiers.

14 Responses

  1. Curiously the ABC’s article on this mentions that SBS would be participating with broadcasting Socceroos World Cup matches- how does that work?

  2. The ABC really have been the poor man of FTA sports broadcasting for some years now, the impression is that even the second hand sporting highlight clips used by the news department relies on the generosity of commercial TV to be played. The ABC does make the best of what they’ve got however, especially coverage of women’s sports, which they promote like a badge of honour, so the W-League is obviously a major coup for them. A-League would love some better commercial coverage and the nearest they had was from the SBS, who over the years have done more for football fans than any other channel, so this adds to the curiosity about why the A-League switched to the ABC who don’t exactly specialise in the round ball game .

  3. Its very evident the A-League has lost a lot of appeal. Fox Sports paid big $$$ for cricket rights partly due to falling ratings of A-league matches. Delayed finals is big negative in this new deal – the grand final should at least be live. In the age of smart phones and broadband internet, delayed matches do not work.

  4. This is good news its pretty much the same as the past 2-3 years when TEN and SBS had the shared rights with Foxtel. But like everybody has said on this topic Football/world game is not commercially viable on commercial FTA tv. Everywhere else its on subscription and with the rise of subscription streaming services there is no need to keep it on FTA the support aint there. National team games should be on FTA that’s for sure. I am a basketball fan and there were no Boomers games on FTA tv during world cup from China. So Socceroos fans should count themselves lucky.

  5. It is good to have the games in a high profile slots, where everyone can see them. This is particularly important for the Socceroos and Matildas’ games. Hopefully the ABC can manage some decent commentary, anchoring and analysis though. In the past it’s been awful; SBS did it much better.

      1. Okay, well I don’t want to hear annual whinging at budget time from the ABC or their supporters. They’re clearly got enough funding to pick up the commercial rejects.

      1. I reply all the time about Govt wasting money on TV. This is just another example of it. They’re happy to rip funds from regional areas to fund niche sports and TV channels. The Govt fund approx 40% of FTA TV channels in Australia. That’s beyond ridiculous.

        If you want to watch a niche sport, pay for it.

        1. Saying it’s 40% is a cop out and stats twisted to suit your agenda. If you took every dollar pumped into Australian FTA TV, I doubt 40% of it is on the 2 Government funded Networks.
          And how about the $30mill the Govt gave Fox?
          Personally, good deal for the ABC except for the delayed A League finals.

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