Network Ten has secured simulcast rights for the A-League and Socceroos matches next season. The deal, which is an on-sell from Fox Sports, will involve one A-League match each round on Saturday evening on Ten One using Fox Sports coverage.
In December, Fox Sports and News Corp secured a $346 million broadcast rights deal to broadcast all A-League, Socceroos, Matildas, W-League and FFA Cup games over the next six years - the largest single sports rights deal involving football in this country.
It ends months of speculation about which broadcaster would pick up the free-to-air portion of A-League rights and also ends SBS's tenure covering the competition. Harvey Norman has come on board as a sponsor of Ten's Saturday Night coverage.
For Ten, it's another live sports asset that it can broadcast without footing the bill for production costs as Fox Sports will be producing the coverage with their commentary team of Simon Hill, Robbie Slater, Andy Harper, Mark Bosnich, Adam Peacock and Tara Rushton.
It is also another sign of the close working relationship that Ten and Foxtel have forged in recent times. Foxtel has a 15% stake in Ten and there is speculation one of its part owner, News Corp, could secure a larger interest in the business if the government's media reforms package passes.
For football, the deal ensures that at least one game each round is on free-to-air television, which is important to help the code grow its supporter base and commercial viability.
“This is a win for football fans and an opportunity for us to showcase our game on a commercial network with a recent history of successfully covering major sport,” FFA chief executive David Gallop said.
“We will take the biggest matches of the Hyundai A League - such as the Saturday night derbies - into every household in Australia live for the first time.
“It is part of the overall broadcast deal with Fox Sports and means that we will be working with them to drive interest and subscriptions to their ‘all games live’ coverage of the Hyundai A-League.”
SBS used to be known as the home of football and its gradual departure from the sport in recent years will leave many fans disappointed, but the network was only showing Saturday night games on its secondary channel SBS2 and more recently on SBS Viceland.
Aside from the grand final, its ratings on SBS have been below what football chiefs would have expected given that the sport has more registered club players than any other code in this country.
This year's A-League grand final between Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory attracted an average metro audience of 254,000 on SBS and 275,000 on Fox Sports, with 460,000 tuning in to watch the Sky Blues hold aloft the trophy.
Regular season matches, depending on which teams are playing, have had ratings well under 100,000 this season on SBS.
“From October this year, 27 home and away Harvey Norman Saturday Night football matches and five Finals – plus Socceroos matches from next year – will have a new home on free-to-air television,” Ten chief executive Paul Anderson said.
“We will provide a consistent timeslot on One for 30 weeks of the year, promoting the Hyundai A-League and its best game each week to all of Australia.
“We are looking forward to working with Fox Sports and Football Federation Australia to broadcast the A-League to our viewers live on One and live streamed on tenplay,” he said.
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