Nine secures Tennis Australia deal for $425m
Nine's deal delivers Australian Open through to 2029 season at a record price.
- Published by David Knox
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Nine has secured rights to the Australian Open and Tennis Australia matches for a record $425m for the 2025 to 2029 seasons.
Nine has acquired the exclusive live rights (including Free To Air, subscription television, SVOD, streaming, mobile and social media), together with extensive catch-up rights, to the Australian Open as well as the lead up tournaments around Australia – the United Cup, the Adelaide International, and the Hobart International – and the Australian team matches in the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup.
Nine told the ASX, the average annual cash rights fee over the five-year period is c$85m, starting lower and indexing over the term of the deal. Nine will also support Tennis Australia with contra, services and promotion over the duration of the agreement.
“Nine has shown a serious year-round commitment to continue to grow tennis,” Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley said today.
“Together we have regularly set and exceeded targets for ourselves in what has been a highly productive partnership thus far. This new deal further strengthens that relationship in which our organisations work as a true co-operative on the broadcast, production, innovation and promotion of our events and sport. It will ensure we are reaching audiences of all ages and backgrounds across multiple platforms with high quality product.
“We want to show our sport at its best to continually excite tennis fans, while also appealing to a new generation of fans and players across Australia. This new deal will certainly help us do that.”
“We are pleased to announce the extension of the partnership between Nine and Tennis Australia,” Nine CEO Mike Sneesby said.
“Tennis attracts both a broad and very passionate following, and is a perfect fit with Nine’s schedule, audiences and advertisers. The Australian Open has delivered some of Australia’s most iconic sporting moments and largest television audiences and together, we are committed to bringing these great moments to all Australians live and free.”
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22 Responses
They really need to put a stop on Todd Woodbridge and Jelena Dokic doing commentary from a studio here in Australia.
For starters they have zero chemistry as commentary team and with them being in a studio it sucks the life out of the matches and sucks the soul out of everyone watching.
This week is a prime example with the coverage of the BJK Cup. It is just plain awful.
Is it really worth spending $80m a year to ensure people watch MAFS?
Only one way of looking at it… there is Stan subs for the full AO, all the other shows in Q1, the revenue AO generates itself, coverage for Nine publishing (radio, print, digital).
Honestly not surprised but can’t believe we have another 5 years of Channel 9 broadcasting. 9NOW is a terrible live broadcaster. It freezes so much and we all know it will end up on Stan behind a paywall. Thats their whole business model.
Just goes to show if you’re trying to rival other networks and you’ve got the money then you need to show the public how to flaunt it. Then you announce down the track how much profit you made by roping in the views/advertising etc, by showing it. Come on their only other rival is the cricket and they are fully aware of it. That folks is economics for you!
Isn’t so that WIN network should add HD to GEM for the tennis and other sport that it covers ?
So this may mean that Nine probably won’t bid for any of the Cricket 🏏 rights that are due 2024 ,I can’t see 7 wanting to keep them and as for BBL that’s a flop and will only get worse in my eyes.
Nine have claimed they can accommodate both cricket and tennis (of course they would say that to provide competition to seven to make them pay more). With Olympics and Comm games to come, it is very hard for me to imagine seven will bid for all of the cricket – they will want test cricket only. So either Paramount will bid for the whole lot or just the BBL.
What a Gross waste of money tennis is boring Television the money can be better spend on other more worthy causes should as the millions of starving Children in the world
It’s a business, not a charity. How much do you give to the homeless?
It’s a Gross Waste Of Money In My Opinion
Now that 9 hav retained the rights, Im worried that they will stop free streaming on 9now, which is a pain for many tennis fans. Back in 2010, 7 sold some tennis matches to Fox – Some matches were shown exclusively on 7, while Fox screened matches from small courts. Unfortunately, fans may need to pay to subscribe to stan or getting a ground pass. But nevertheless, at least they show all matches in full HD.
“Full HD” is so 15 years ago. For close to half a bil, they should damn well be broadcasting the matches in Ultra HD.
Lol 😂tell that to the FTA channels still stuck in SD 720X576 ,ooh detail.
I’m not sure about SD. It’s time that they should dump SD telecasts. SD telecasts are so bad and it just gets pixellated most of the time. But I feel that primary channels should start broadcasting in 4K.
But I feel that primary channels should start broadcasting in 4K.
Not unless they change to MPEG 4
100% agree on dumping SD broadcasts, which look utterly atrocious (I might actually watch SBS Food occasionally if the picture quality wasn’t total vomit). It might not be feasible for some regional markets, but with virtually every TV nowadays being 720p at a bare minimum (and with built-in HD tuners), SD is a waste of bandwidth that could be used to upgrade the SD multichannels and/or to improve the quality of existing HD ones. Worst case scenario for everyone else is to grab a tuner for $40 or so.
So $100m less than Warburton claimed Nine had already agreed to, and Nine’s papers reported. Around the $80-88m p.a. that objective experts were tipping.
No. It was Nine newspapers that tipped TA was seeking $100m a year. Warburton commented in response, saying “If they pay $100 million for the tennis, good on them.” I’m told that caused chaos… who knows if it enabled Nine to avoid agreeing to more.
The SMH (9 newspaper) are reporting it is an average of $85m in cash pa (it starts at 80 and increases each year it seems) and the contra is estimated to be worth 10-15m pa. That makes it close to 100pa but as David has pointed out, Warburton was merely responding an earlier SMH article.
What is happening with the Olympic rights? Months and months ago it was reported that Nine was ‘close to a deal’ with the IOC
That’s not the last that I heard. Seven has bought the rights to the 2022 Winter @l^mp!cs. The IOC extended the next rights period to cover Paris 2024 to Brisbane 2032 games as well, to maximise the amount that Australian broadcasters would pay. The last I read was that 7,9, Amazon, Paramount and Kayo were still in negotiations. Nine has put out stories saying they are serious about bidding for them. It’s supposed to be finalised later this year.