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Matildas games “quite limited in terms of its commerciality”

Blockbuster audiences for Seven, but no ads in play has been challenging for Seven.

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Monetising the mega audiences from the Matildas has not been straightforward for Seven.

Yesterday CEO James Warburton told analysts, “I think they put important thing with the Women’s World Cup, is that you’ve got to remember, the audience has been absolutely unbelievable and we’ve loved telling the narrative of this wonderful team and go Matildas tonight and hopefully all the way on Sunday… but there’s no ads during play during extra time, during penalty shootout. So it’s quite limited in terms of its commerciality.”

On Saturday the first ad did not appear til around 2 hours into play.

“There’s probably been half a billion dollars spent on soccer rights and we picked the eyes out of this by seeing how incredible the Matildas were at Tokyo and we thought as a home World Cup, how amazing this story would be. It’s exceeded all of our wildest dreams,” he said.

“But it drives our schedule and drives our dominance moving forward across our entire schedule.”

13 Responses

  1. Maybe Seven are just shit at it and not innovative? Can anyone remember if the replays had a sponsor attached? How many times was the L shaped ad graphic used and could it have been used more? Why wasn’t the watermark amended to include MKR coming soon or Voice 7.30 Mon, H&A 7 weeknights? The microphones the hosts used could have been plastered with a sponsor logo instead of the 7 one we were already seeing in the corner of the screen. Rough ideas, but maybe Fifa is at fault who knows

  2. I wonder how much the ingame L shaped bottom left Rexona pop up cost and ultimately how much of a bargain it was for Unilever? That was an innovative advertisement slot?

  3. I am aware of how important commercial and financial gain is so as to to offset sporting event rights costs but couldn’t you just apply premium advertising rates for the pre game, half time and full time slots? Like Super Bowl halftime? And viewers may actually psychologically, subconsciously enjoy no breaks in sport like pay providers which in the long term helps the network brand? FTA Sports coverage is hard but I am guessing no one would ever say “please put more ads in during play”. Kinda like that it bugs FTA Network bean counters…

  4. FIFA will try to make money from sports cable and streamers and public broadcasters. They blacked out all the other advertising at grounds and try to restrict want non-sponor ads are shown. Of course half the FIFA’s executive committee was convicted over kickbacks involving awarding the World Cup to Russian and Qatar, and US broadcast rights. The IOC behaves in a similar fashion.

      1. I believe that no advertising breaks are allowed during play. And if you remember, Channel Nine had to deal with this rule during the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

      1. I don’t think I speak for everyone on the forums, but here in Melbourne, coverage will begin at around 5pm on 7mate with the pre-match with the match itself 6pm on 7mate. But remember the usual rule, check your guides for details.

  8. I think this was mentioned on Gruen a few weeks ago. It is a difficult sport to inject ads into, where as Russell so brilliantly stated – cricket is made for advertising – six ball – ad, six ball ad! Still with the amount of stoppages for injuries which seem to take a good 3 minutes resolve, I would think they could squeeze a few ads into these breaks in play. Hell, even 9 manages to squeeze ads into the NRL games when the game is still in play.

    I don’t know if this was a contractual matter between FIFA and the broadcaster, but I think there is some leeway to monetise their investment.

  9. “On Saturday the first ad did not appear til around 2 hours into play.”

    Wasn’t there 2 ad breaks at least during half time from what I remember? 45-50 mins in.

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