Latest news with #PatrickDelany
The Guardian
27-02-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
More games, more fans and more coverage as NRL eyes profit from Las Vegas punt
Bigger, bolder and better. The desert dust had barely settled on the NRL's first trip to Las Vegas before league boss Andrew Abdo was doubling down. With a longer runway to plan and prepare for the rugby league extravaganza the next time around, the NRL chief executive was soon promising to go even larger. Now that the league has arrived at its destination, there are more fans in town, more events on the ground, and teams from more countries putting the finishing touches on their own show. Twice as many matches as last year are still to come when all the off-field glitz and glamour are put to one side and the quadruple-header finally kicks off at Allegiant Stadium on Saturday (Sunday AEDT). The NRL was quick to talk up the wins, no matter how big or small, from its first foray on to the rocky terrain of the US sporting landscape last year. A crowd of 40,746 was the largest for a rugby league game on American soil. More than 23,000 of those tickets were sold in the US. Tickets were bought in another 30 countries. New subscriptions to the international streaming app Watch NRL soared 167% – admittedly from a low base – compared to the same period leading into the previous season. And, most hopefully, an average of 61,000 Americans households watched the Sea Eagles' win over the Rabbitohs, while 44,000 later watched the Roosters defeat the Broncos. The gamble to start the season in the US in the hope of attracting global attention instead found its biggest payoff closer to home. The Australian television audience smashed the record viewership for a season opener by 10.5% while also becoming the most watched regular-season game in history, as a combined 4.11 million watched the double-header. The hype surrounding the first jaunt to Las Vegas, and heavy support from a media contingent helpfully in tow, jolted the league into a record-breaking season and has since taken on a life of its own. 'We were very, very keen on the event as a big stunt that starts the Australian season,' Foxtel Group chief executive, Patrick Delany, tells Guardian Australia. 'The extraordinary thing about this is it has become a massive Australian event even though it's not in Australia.' Ticket sales to the four matches that will begin with Super League sides Wigan and Warrington squaring off have already surpassed the total number sold last year. Adding a pair of clubs from the rugby league hotbed of northern England to the program, as well as a historic women's international between the Lionesses and Jillaroos, has ensured that twice as many fans are travelling from the UK this time. More than 20,000 Australians are making the much longer sojourn to Las Vegas, compared to 15,000 in 2024. Whether as many fans from the United States, regardless of that number being boosted by expats originally from the competing nations, can push the crowd figure closer to the stadium capacity 65,000 remains to be seen. The NRL might be well on its way to creating a new destination event that Delany calls a 'second Magic Round' but its hopes of expansion, long held up as a key pillar of the Las Vegas experiment, more likely rest on finding a way into more American homes. Foxtel, with its sporting arms Fox Sports and streaming platform Kayo, is a critical partner in that journey and helped leverage relationships to secure a spot on free-to-air channel Fox for the NRL opener between the Raiders and Warriors. It will be the first NRL premiership game shown freely on US television, though it was a misstep not to schedule the Panthers and Sharks in the time slot if only to showcase the four-time premiers and the talents of their star playmaker Nathan Cleary to a fresh audience. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion Gambling, along with the occasional hints of bad behaviour, are familiar clouds hanging over the Las Vegas venture. Australian Rugby League Commission boss Peter V'landys earlier this week talked up 'a possibility that we'll actually return a profit on Vegas', but while ticket sales and streaming subscriptions are tracking in the right direction, and new sponsorships have been announced, there has been little talk about reaching the promised land of the lucrative US sports betting market. For now, the view seems to be; if you broadcast it, they will come. For all the backslapping after the NRL's first visit to Las Vegas, and typically brash talk from rugby league bosses of putting on a bigger, bolder and better show this time, there is still much to be done to live up to their much grander plans.
The Guardian
21-02-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
AFL footy is protected by anti-siphoning rules, so why must fans pay to watch some games?
The Australian rules community survives on habit. More than a century old, the VFL and now AFL counts more than 1.3m club members, and hundreds of thousands fans prove their commitment each week by attending matches. Millions more watch on television, and increasingly on smart TVs, computers and phones. But in 2025, they have an adjustment to make. The new seven-year, $4.5bn broadcast deal struck between the AFL, Channel Seven and Foxtel is about to kick in. The broadcasters are promising hours of new shows each week, hosted by big names and emerging talents. Seven has pledged new footy content every day, leveraging their new streaming rights which give fans access to Seven's matches via 7plus. No-one doubts there will be more content than any one fan could ever need. There is just one catch. Seven will not screen any AFL matches on Saturdays, live or on delay, in Victoria and Tasmania, for the duration of the season. From round nine, residents in other states will get to see Saturday matches involving their local teams. Those in the game's traditional heartland will have to make do with VFL matches on Saturday nights in a new initiative pushed by Seven to soften the blow. Ultimately, if Australians want to watch AFL footy on a Saturday, they will have to subscribe to Foxtel (or streaming services Kayo and Binge). The arrangements have been largely understood since the deal was announced in 2022, but on the eve of the season the reality for many has crystallised. A backlash has followed. After Foxtel chief executive Patrick Delany suggested this week Australians now 'see as normal paying for content', communications minister Michelle Rowland was inclined to respond. 'While some Australians may choose to pay to watch sport, not everyone can afford to do so,' she said. 'Australia's anti-siphoning scheme promotes free access to televised coverage of iconic sporting events, including the AFL.' The anti-siphoning arrangements were developed in the 1990s in response to the rise of subscription television, and a fear that pay TV providers with deep pockets could secure the rights to prominent sporting events and place them behind a paywall. Governments of both persuasions have supported the philosophy underpinning the law: access to culturally significant sporting events should not require additional payment. Yet those inclined to burrow into the legislation will find an apparent contradiction. The list of protected events includes 'every match in the Australian Football League premiership, including the finals series'. Despite the government's best intentions, Rowland's comments highlighted there's only so much under anti-siphoning the government can do. 'Rights deals and scheduling decisions are ultimately a matter for the relevant sporting code and their media partners,' she said. Jon Marquard, director of broadcast rights consulting firm Janez Media, said the scheme can be misunderstood. In a submission to the government's latest anti-siphoning review that concluded last year, he wrote: 'it merely operates to ensure that [free-to-air] TV broadcasters must be given a reasonable opportunity to acquire broadcast rights, and then if those rights are acquired, they may be, but do not have to be broadcast.' For high-profile rights negotiations like the AFL or NRL, free-to-air networks have sought to outbid their peers even while knowing the ultimate outcome will more than likely involve them forgoing rights to screen some listed matches. They have done so as part of complex commercial agreements, out of respect for the wishes of Foxtel – which needs exclusive content to drive subscriptions – and the sporting organisation – which wants to extract the best outcome balancing both exposure and revenue. Sign up to From the Pocket: AFL Weekly Jonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week's biggest AFL stories after newsletter promotion Indeed, the direction of the latest AFL rights negotiations prompted input by the government which feared a drift away from free-to-air coverage. In 2022, close to when the deal was struck, Rowland called for 'no diminution in the availability of AFL matches on free-to-air television under the new deal'. As Rowland noted in her comments this week, the anti-siphoning 'promotes free access', but it does not guarantee it. 'It basically adds complexity,' Marquard said. 'If you're a rights seller, it means that you are removing the normal level of competitive tension you would get, because everyone knows you need to get a certain predetermined outcome of something on free-to-air, and therefore your commercial return won't be the same,' he said. NRL fans are watching the AFL experience knowingly, given high level men's rugby league on Saturday has been the domain of Foxtel for the best part of a decade. Channel Seven remains proud of its deal, highlighting how its viewers will see more Thursday night and Sunday night matches. Seven's head of AFL, Gary O'Keeffe, said it's a major investment. 'We know fans will love Seven's new era of football.' They will find out on the second Saturday in March.
The Guardian
18-02-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
AFL fans expected to fork out as Saturday live coverage goes behind paywall in 2025
The head of Foxtel says AFL fans will 'run towards the light' this season and subscribe to its pay TV service or sports streaming platform Kayo when they realise much of the season's live Saturday coverage has gone behind a paywall. A new AFL broadcast agreement with Fox Sports and Channel Seven kicks in this season. Kayo Sports or Foxtel will required to watch live AFL on a Saturday in Victoria and Tasmania for every round of the home-and-away season, and nationally for the first eight rounds. Patrick Delany believes Australians 'see as normal paying for content these days' and the new exclusive live Saturday AFL matches on the pay-TV provider will be enough convince them to sign up with a subscription platform. 'Sport is nothing unless it's live. 90% of all viewership on Kayo is live sport, so that's the beginning and ending,' he said. 'If you're not live, you're not in the game, and $25 a month is so cheap for a family to be entertained, so I think it's one of those moments where Australians will run towards the light.' Kayo has kept its basic plan at $25 per month since its launch seven years ago although its premium tier – offering streaming on two simultaneous devices and 4K picture quality – will increase in price from $35 to $40 in March. This season Foxtel will also use its own AFL commentators for every match of each round, rather than taking the Seven feed for matches it shares with the free-to-air broadcaster. Seven has been promoting its new rights deal which allows matches it screens via TV aerials to also be streamed on 7plus and a Saturday focus on state footy including the WAFL, SANFL and prime time VFL as part of a push for new footy content every day of the week. Seven's Saturday matches last year consistently averaged an audience of half a million viewers according to ratings provider Voz, and were regularly Australia's highest-rating Saturday program. The start of the new seven-year, $4.5bn AFL rights agreement comes as competition in streaming is increasing. Disney+ will begin to offer ESPN – also available on Foxtel and Kayo – in coming weeks, and Amazon and Netflix appear to be increasing their appetite for sporting properties. Delany said ESPN and its American codes represent 'a great offering of sport, but they're very minor sports in Australia, and they skew mainly to summer'. He said adding them to Disney+ is not unlike Foxtel's decision to add live AFL and NRL to subscribers of Binge, Foxtel's streaming platform with news and entertainment. The Fox Footy team have been working internally on the transition to the new rights arrangement since June, and Delany said he had collaborated with the AFL on a fixture which would assist in driving subscriptions. 'With the line-up of sports rights shifting and the way in which we do things, we always see change as great opportunity for growth,' he said. 'You want the subscribers to stay longer and to be better engaged, and we just see this as a golden era of sports streaming.' Sign up to From the Pocket: AFL Weekly Jonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week's biggest AFL stories after newsletter promotion Despite Seven's move into the streaming space this year, Delany said the network's new digital AFL rights won't affect Foxtel and Kayo subscriber numbers. 'Our kids are not watching free-to-air TV, they're watching YouTube and Tiktok. The world's moved on, and I think the network should have moved quicker to digital,' he said. 'In terms of how it affects us, Nine has had digital NRL rights forever [since 2018], it doesn't affect us and our growth. What affects what people want to watch is being able to see every game live, 4K, great commentary, and now the exclusivity of Saturday and other games.' Foxtel is awaiting ACCC and FIRB approval on a takeover by Saudi Arabia-backed streaming company Dazn. Delany said he hoped it could be resolved before the government went into caretaker mode ahead of the coming federal election, but he was excited about the global opportunities for Australian sport. 'To date, we've had to convince people like Sky and ESPN, can you do us a favour and put it on,' he said. 'Dazn are in 200 countries, this is one of those moments where we can really march forward and represent Australian sports very, very well.'
