A media row has ensued ahead of October's Rugby World Cup, after a refusal by Australian media publishers to agree on accreditation demands.
Negotiations over access to the tournament, between The Pacific Area Newspaper Publisher's Association (PANPA) and the International Rugby Board (IRB), are in chaos, and may result in a void of Australian journalists officially attending matches.
The IRB has refused to relax its restrictions covering online reporting of the tournament and the use of video. The IRB will not allow ads preceding or proceeding online video coverage on newspaper publishers’ websites.
The disagreement was first raised in June when the IRB said journalists would not be accredited if their employers did not agree to restrictions on how content such as video was used on their websites.
The break down in negotiations means Australian media companies such as Fairfax, News Limited and AAP won't cover the rugby union from within venues and may not send journalists to New Zealand at all.
Chief executive of PANPA, Mark Hollands said the current accreditation demands would escalate and impact on how media is able to cover other sports in the future.
“The bottom line is that the publishers are in a position to give better coverage by not accrediting.
“The IRB believes newspaper publishers should be restricted in the quantity of video they may use for reporting news on digital platforms.
“Publishers' rights to use video to report news is permitted under the fair dealing exemption and they are not prepared to sign away these rights,” Holland said.
This debacle comes at a time when the value of sports rights is being questioned across the board.
Consolidated Media Holdings executive chairman, John Alexander told Sydney press yesterday: “There are question marks about some of the sporting costs. Clearly there has been a lot of publicity about the NRL deal coming up and obviously Fox Sports already takes a large chunk of the NRL.
“I don't think there is any appetite at Fox Sports to hand vast additional cheques for no extra value. Unless (incumbent broadcaster) Channel 9 has got much, much deeper pockets than we all believe, then I think the prices that have been talked about with NRL remain confusing,” Mr Alexander said.
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