‘Free-to-air TV works’ in supporting, maintaining and selling Australian sport
The survival of commercial and competitive sports in Australia will rely on free-to-air and subscription television networks feeding money into the sports, according to Conor Woods, managing director ANZ, beIN Sports.
David Barham, network executive, Big Bash League and Formula One agreed at Mumbrella’s Sports Marketing Summit, noting that “free-to-air TV works”.
Conor Woods, David Barham, Scott Wenkart, Rebecca Haagsma, Jeremy Loeliger and David Ray
With subscription television being the original disrupter in the market and investing $600m a year into sport, Woods argued the medium cannot – and will not – disappear.
“A lot of sports infrastructure wouldn’t exist without that investment, so I don’t know about it disappearing because television has been an incredibly successful model for monetising sport over the last few decades.
“People want more choice and they want less cost, and that really means less revenue in the short to medium term,” Woods told the room at Mumbrella’s Sport Marketing Summit in a session on the future of sports broadcasting.
He noted that the distribution of funds would not be even.
“More money will go to the key big sports, it will be more concentrated and it will be the smaller sports that will struggle.
“You will probably end up with two sets of successful types of sports and that will be ones that have global reach and scale, and you will have the very strong local sports,” he said.
The MD of beIN Sports urged people to not favour one medium over the other, but instead try to look at the bigger picture outcome.
Barham agreed saying “pay TV has put a hell of a lot of money back into sport” which has allowed sport to spend more money increasing the quality of the sport and the resources needed.”
The network executive, Braham, used NAB and Aus Kick as an example, arguing the rise and popularity of Aus Kick has been due to television.
“There is a huge roll for free-to-air TV.
“What Big Bash has done for cricket is a great example. Big Bash has turned cricket from a sport that five years ago was looking like it was in real trouble to a sport with mammoth growth just from free to air.”
Advocating free-to-air television, Braham told the room once money has been taken out of sport, the quality will start to decline which, inevitably, will see a fall in players, fans and viewers.
“What makes television survive and great sporting events is crowds, people, quality, performance. As soon as you start taking the money out of the sports and that all happens and the AFL is no where as good as it used to be and only half the crowds turn up and the kids aren’t playing, where are we then?
“The role of pay TV and free-to-air TV is still extremely important in this country,” he said.
Abigail Dawson was Mumbrella's senior content journalist covering event content. She left Mumbrella to move into an agency role in 2020.
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