Most Brumbies games are not on free-to-air TV, a decision that may have cost the code some supporters. Photo: Jayzie Photography
Watching sport was so easy when I was growing up – cricket was always on Nine, league on Ten, and AFL on Seven. We used to think SBS stood for Soccer Broadcasting Station.
Now, we have to pay for subscriptions and navigate through a maze of streaming services to find the game we want to watch.
While this has led to calls for the Prime Minister to intervene, it’s up to sports administrators to prioritise the long-term future of their codes over short-term profits and fight to ensure their best products are aired for free.
The emergence of paid subscription services in the 1990s prompted the federal government to introduce anti-siphoning laws, aimed at ensuring that sporting events of national and cultural significance remained on TV channels that did not require a subscription to watch. This includes the Olympics, Melbourne Cup, Test Cricket (when played in Australia) and much of the NRL and AFL seasons.
But there are many loopholes in these laws, and giving terrestrial TV first dibs on something doesn’t necessarily mean they will take it. In recent years, we’ve seen an increasing number of popular events (like AFL on Saturdays and one-day international cricket) migrate to Pay TV, leaving punters having to fork out or miss out. Getting Foxtel used to have us covered for most sports, but not anymore.
Take the average Canberra sports fan who wants to see the Socceroos qualify for the World Cup, our cricketers play South Africa in the World Test Championship, and also watches the Raiders and Brumbies play each week. They had to subscribe to four different services – Paramount Plus, Amazon Prime, Kayo and Stan Sports – potentially paying over $1000 over the course of the year.
Anthony Albanese has thus been put under pressure this week to change laws to ensure more events are broadcast for free in the future.
This is a challenge for the federal government because deciding which events are culturally significant and which aren’t is a matter of opinion. One-day cricket, for example, was once a staple of the summer in Australia in the 1980s. Many fans were irked to see it go to Foxtel, though others view it as a dying form of the game as Twenty20 cricket overshadows it.
Women’s sports have also grown since the government first introduced anti-siphoning laws and we could question why the AFLW doesn’t have more free exposure.
It’s not possible to have every sport on free-to-air TV, especially if the taxpayer has to cover the costs of broadcasting it on ABC or SBS, when commercial stations don’t consider it viable. It’s also unfair to those who miss out on their favourite TV show because of wall-to-wall coverage of bats, balls, posts and racquets (a group called Anti-Football League was once established in Australia to protest weekend footy saturation).
The reality is that sporting codes themselves have more influence than politicians in determining whether the public should have to pay to watch their product. Administrators need to decide whether to take the more lucrative TV deal for their matches or ensure that the next generation of children can easily watch the best they have to offer.
This lesson should have been learned by rugby union in the mid-1990s. At that time, the Wallabies were dominant, rules changes made the game more viewer-friendly and rival code rugby league was tearing itself apart with the Super League war. There were those who ran the so-called game they play in heaven who predicted it would soon become the nation’s dominant oval ball game.
Those same geniuses, however, sold off the code’s flagship competition, the Super 12, to Foxtel, making it impossible for fans to watch the sport on a regular basis on free-to-air. Some 30 years later, all but a few matches are accessible to the non-paying public, but few seem to care as the popularity of rugby now rivals that of lawn bowls.
Other sports should take note and pay attention to fans who complain when important matches are lost in the vortex of streaming services: fight to get them back by offering what you can on free-to-air, or risk losing your support base forever?
