Editor’s Note
In April, Seven CEO James Warburton made it clear he was gunning for his network to regain the Australian Open broadcast rights, admitting that, should it be successful, it would be at the expense of the cricket rights.
“Cricket Australia haven't delivered on their contract with the Big Bash,” he admitted. “They have to make fundamental changes to the league. They're finally making the right noises.”
The “right noises” might not be enough. Warburton was deliberate when asked if Seven could run the tennis and cricket at the same time. “No”, he confirmed.
But since then, Ash Barty's retirement has put a damper on Australia's love of the game.
“Barty's retirement took a lot of the oxygen out of those rights,” Warburton admitted in early May.
Seven lost the Australian Open rights in 2018, after holding them for four decades. Nine outbid them, paying $60 million a year to Tennis Australia to broadcast the grand slam until 2024. In its wake, Seven aggressively went after cricket, securing a deal with Cricket Australia to broadcast test matches, one day-ers, and the Big Bash League.
Warburton has made no secret of his disappointment in the Big Bash League. The BBL attracted an average viewing audience of just 630,000 per match this summer. In early 2016, the league was attracting 1.1 million viewers per game.
Luckily he has the free-to-air AFL rights, the most lucrative in the land, to occupy his interest until at least 2024. Seven and pay-TV provider Foxtel currently split these rights, the type of friendly deal that relaxing the anti-siphoning laws may forever kill.
A "use it or lose it" rule will come into effect next year that will force free-to-air networks to actually broadcast major national sporting events live, and in full. This follows Seven's decision to cut away from a high profile Serena Williams match during this summer's Australian Open.
In addition, sporting events will be divided into two tiers: nationally iconic events such as the Melbourne Cup will be Tier A, and must be broadcast live and in full across Australia. Tier B events are regionally or nationally significant and can be broadcast on a terrestrial multi-channel and can be aired with up to a four-hour delay. This includes four games of AFL per round, five games of the NRL per round, the British Open golf, the French Open tennis and early rounds of Wimbledon.
This seems like the beginning of a slippery slope away from free-to-air being protected from the likes of Netflix, Foxtel, or Disney+, who are watching in the wings, waiting to snap up any rights that are no longer protected. Stan currently holds the Rugby Union rights, showing that an Aussie league can exist solely on a subscription service. Disney owns ESPN, which basically has an open cheque book for sporting rights.
Ten and Paramount Plus are aggressively going after the AFL rights, which already command an insane amount: Foxtel and Seven are paying around $946 million for the 2023 and 2024 seasons.
Once this money tips over the psychological billion-dollar barrier, and the anti-siphoning rules are relaxed further and further, there will be no ceiling on what rights holders will pay for quality sport - nor any need to broadcast live and free. Once the big money comes, someone needs to be paying. The days of free sport on the TV might be over sooner than we think.