Foxtel leans into sports and new advertising models at energetic upfront

If you weren’t aware yet that Foxtel had recently been bought by a sports broadcasting monolith, then the locker-room vibe of its 2026 upfront presentation will have been mighty confusing.

The event was titled Enter The Game, the ‘game day look’ was ‘courtside casual’ (sneakers, blazer over a t-shirt) and the venue — a disused power station in the inner west of Sydney — was decked out like the bastard child of a 1990s gaming arcade and a nightclub, with cricket nets, car-racing games, people kitted out in soccer uniforms, and tickets to the Ashes up for grabs.

It didn’t smell of Deep Heat, but there was a half-time break where oranges were handed out from eskies. And Adam Gilchrist was milling about, talking about tequila shots — but we’ll get to him.

Foxtel is a sports company. Foxtel is also an advertising company. These are the two messages the upfront leaned heavily into, and it did so, so successfully the audience had almost forgotten Foxtel also does TV shows until Cameron Daddo hopped on stage. We’ll get to him, too.

Lara Pitt and Cooper Cronk present (Mumbrella)

Let’s start with the sports, seeing Foxtel is a Dazn company — as its new slogan reminds us. There were no new broadcast deals to announce — it still has every game of the NRL, the AFL, the cricket, the PGA and golf Opens, every Formula 1, Supercars and MotoGP race, plus all the US sports through ESPN.

Kayo Sports is getting a little AI helper, though, called Kayo Buddy — which offers realtime insights like player stats, score and fixture changes, and general teletext-style updates on the sport. Basically, Buddy sounds a lot like this generation’s Clippy — the helpful, annoying Microsoft paperclip.

Now, to the advertising opportunities.

Kayo Sports and Binge will offer two new ad formats: pause ads, which are full-screen ads that come up when a viewer hits ‘pause’ (although this will ruin the screenshot experience somewhat), and L-bars, which wrap around live sporting matches with a brand message — meaning Foxtel can continue to present their games “ad-break free” but cram them with ads.

Additionally, Kayo Sports is introducing three-to-six second solus bumper ads just before a live game begins — I suspect by the time you’re reading this, advertisers have already locked in the solus’ for the opening rounds of next year’s NRL and AFL seasons.

Lara Pitt, Foxtel NRL commentator (Mumbrella)

Foxtel is also launching Narratv, its new in-house ‘branded storytelling’ division, which basically produces wholesale television series or specials for brands.

This isn’t uncharted water for the company, as Cameron Daddo hopped on stage to explain.

He currently stars in travel series Luxury Escapes, a tie-in with the bookings site of the same name. The show’s third season premiered as Daddo was standing on stage – which I guess proved it isn’t filmed live. Foxtel also produces Gen Well, a health and wellness series with Amcal Pharmacy, and Six and Out: Second Innings — a McDonald’s-branded documentary about the reformation of cricketer Brett Lee’s rock band … which sounds like a ChatGPT hallucination, but I assure you is 100% real.

They are expanding out into new advertising spaces, too. Foxtel has teamed with Livewire, a company that inserts brands like Uber and Samsung into video games, with this ranging from in-game signage, to uniform branding in sporting games, to entire world builds.

To this end, they’ve constructed Kayo Sports Stadium in the Roblox universe, which in turn will allow Foxtel to “present partnership opportunities for Australian and international sports to enter Roblox”, while also filling the virtual stadium with real-life sponsors. There was no word on whether there would be an in-game tribunal off the side of the stadium to handle any virtual misdeeds by the virtual players. I digress.

Garry Lyons, AFL legend, Foxtel broadcaster, and future social media influencer?

Advertisers will also have access to Foxtel’s talent and creators, who will be “producing fit-for-platform content across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and more”. This sounds like influencer sponsored content, with a Foxtel bow around it. They assured advertisers this would all be brand safe and PG-rated, which makes it a lot less ‘wild west’ than the world of influencer marketing tends to be, but the details on which on-air presenters had signed on for this, or the mechanics of how this would work, weren’t elaborated upon. It’s a smart move, though, and yet another option for advertisers.

Some of the innovative advertising opportunities might raise customer concerns.

Foxtel is partnering with Allt TV for an “interactive retail advertising” offering that promises “smarter second-screen experiences” that might just push the friendship with viewers, if the reaction from the upfront audience is any indication.

The advertising technology “connects the apps viewers already use on their phones to the content they are watching on TV in real time, making key moments and offers instantly actionable.”

Basically, if you are watching a live NRL game, and open your food delivery app, McDonald’s will pop up with a timely offer. That seems fine, if a little eager.

When told that a Foxtel viewer could be enjoying an episode of Great Australian Bake Off, and their grocery shopping app would pre-fill a cart with ingredients featured in the program, the audience audibly reacted like consumers who’d had their privacy breached, rather than advertisers scoping a great new marketing opportunity. I don’t want to be watching Selling Houses and discover my Commbank app has organised a mortgage approval for me.

Likewise, there was an audible giggle when the new L-bar in-game advertising was described as “non-intrusive’, while a rather prominent Coke-red advertisement filled a lot of the screen. The bright red Coke ad wasn’t the most subtle of shades to choose when attempting to display unobtrusive advertising.

But these are minor quibbles, and will no doubt seem like quaint concerns in 2035, when Foxtel’s entire board is run by a single AI.

Judging from the conversations I had during and after the presentation, Foxtel’s sales pitch definitely went into double overtime: at more than two hours, it was longer than an ad-free Super Saturday NRL match brought to you in pristine 4K.

And speaking of advertising, there was a point where cricketing legend Adam Gilchrist appeared on stage to extoll the upcoming sporting slate, then took the opportunity to shamelessly promote his new tequila brand. Here’s a philosophical question: if someone does a shameless plug, while acknowledging it’s a shameless plug, does it make it more or less shameless?

Adam Gilchrist really wants you to try his tequila (Mumbrella)

The streaming services are all jostling for the same advertising dollars, but they are also jostling against outdoor media, social media, radio, and audio, which means they need a clear way to showcase the benefit of streaming advertising. This means clarity around effectiveness, for one. Which needs unity.

To this end, a number of the big players have joined the Video Futures Collective, which Foxtel started two years ago as an informal think tank with three key priority areas: building consensus on streaming video basics such as naming conventions, definitions and best practice; collaboration on industry-wide case studies and exploration of innovation across measurement models; and investigating closer integration with agencies around planning and buying.

Toby Dewar, Director of Customer Engagement

Toby Dewar, Director of Customer Engagement announced that, after two years, the VFC is becoming an independent industry backed body, “with structure governance and a simple mandate to go faster, to go broader, and to ensure we keep the customer at the centre of how we push forward with the streaming revolution.”

Seven, Nine, and Paramount are yet to jump on board, but Dewar said they “are exploring ways to collaborate and focus on shared research projects to better understand the outcomes across screens.”

This was welcome news to the advertisers in the room — many agency observers were most impressed by this element.

“Our industry needs that,” Kim Norman, Wavemaker head of investment, told Mumbrella at the event. “It really does. I think if you were to ask any agency on where we waste most of our time – it still is on how we buy screens.

“We’ve really got to innovate in that space.”

Brittany Crowley, UM’s national head of investment, said: “I don’t think there’ll ever be one measurement, but I like the way that Foxtel addressed the Video Futures Council. They’re in the conversation, leading the charge head-on.”

Carolyn Northcote, Media & Investment Partner at Avenue C, told Mumbrella this morning she felt “it was a measured upfront rather than a headline-grabbing one”, admitting she “missed the big, all-encompassing sizzle reel that signals a year of must-watch moments” of upfronts past.

Many others simply said it was full of energy, but far too long.

The future of TV and advertising and sports broadcasting rights is changing rapidly, and Foxtel is determined to lead the charge.

It was an impressive sell. It would have been nice to have access to a fast-forward button.

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