Seven open to NRL and A-Leagues as it builds digital sports arsenal
A Seven executive has revealed that the network is open to looking at the rights to some major Australian sports codes on the back of revamped coverage plans for cricket and the 2025 AFL season.
On a new episode of Mumbrella’s one-on-one podcast, Gereurd Roberts, group managing director of Seven Digital, discussed the media giant’s big plans for cricket and AFL – which includes streaming rights – and said this is only the beginning.
When asked if Seven would look at an opportunity to bring other big Australian sporting codes on board, such as the NRL or A-Leagues competitions, Roberts responded: “Yeah, 100%.”
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According to Roberts, the content pillars of 7Plus – unveiled at Seven’s Upfront earlier this month – will do two things for viewers: Capture the migration of audiences from broadcast to streaming and give “younger audiences a new relationship with Seven”.
“We’re capturing new and younger audiences, which is great. The second two pillars though – premium library and first run exclusives – are actually about strategically targeting a different audience,” he explained.
“And that’s where we’re looking to compete with the ad-funded SVODs… 45% of the 7Plus audience as of today only consumes premium library or first run exclusives entirely on demand. That’s over 300, 000 Australians every single day who treat us in the same way as they treat the ad funded [models].”
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While Nine holds the NRL broadcast rights until 2027, Paramount holds the A-Leagues rights until the end of the 2025/26 season.
“Sport and news are a reason for people to come back every single day,” Roberts continued.
“What we see and what we’re trying to scale for the benefit of our advertising partners is daily active usage. We want scale consistent audiences in the demographics that they’re trying to reach every single day. I think that’s one of the benefits that we’ve gotten that sport brings.”
Roberts’ comments come as Seven announced the recruitment of Sports Entertainment Network (SEN) CEO Craig Hutchison, to its 2025 AFL line-up, the latest announcement in a string of sport-related movements for the network.
Listen to the full podcast here.
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Neil Griffiths is the Managing Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the company in October 2023.
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It would be great if 7 acquired worldwide rights to Wallabies RU games … a scandal that O/S matches cannot be viewed free to air despite Canberra’s empty anti-siphoning promises.
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Trying to watch cricket on 7 is terrible not enjoyable at all with advertisements every few minutes surely they have enough money to. be able to reduce the Ads.
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If 7 got the NRL rights it would probably kill off 9 as a TV station.
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Macca is the only program I listen to on 702 ,have never listened to Simon Marnie
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Time for change folks. Let’s just move on shall we. Let others have a chance to shine.
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