New Radio Deals Announced

by Johnson Leung, reporting for AFANA in Melbourne

Overseas footy fans will be able to continue to listen to Saturday afternoon matches on Radio Australia, as part of a new three-year radio rights deal. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's international shortwave service will broadcast a combination of first and second choice matches on Saturday afternoons, despite ABC Managing Director Mark Scott's public concerns about the government-funded broadcaster being relegated to a "secondary caller" on Saturday afternoons.

Domestically, the ABC and newcomer SEN will cover five matches each round, including Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, the early Sunday afternoon match - which is usually played outside Victoria - and the new Sunday twilight game starting at 4.45pm AEST. Triple M and 3AW will call four games per weekend, including first pick of the Saturday afternoon match if more than one is being played at the same time, after the AFL confirmed it had scrapped the old rotational system where the stations took it in turns to have access to the Saturday match of the day. In cases where there is only one Saturday afternoon game in Melbourne, the ABC, Triple M and 3AW will provide competing calls.

ABC Director of Radio Sue Howard said that the package represents outstanding value and reaffirms ABC Local Radio's status as the leading broadcaster of major sporting events in Australia, while ABC Editor of Radio Sport Peter Longman conceded that the broadcaster could not compete financially with some of its commercial competitors. "In the end I think we've got great value for money and we're still very much involved in AFL coverage both in Victoria and around Australia," he was quoted as saying.

The radio rights agreement for the 2007-09 seasons will generate about A$7.2 million in direct revenue to the AFL, which is roughly three times the value of the previous rights agreement. The lion's share will come from Triple M and 3AW, who are understood to have each paid close to A$1 million a year. SEN's parent company Pacific Star Broadcasting paid $1.5 million for its share of the rights and would issue 10 million share options to the AFL each year for the next three, at A$0.062 per share, giving the league an option to take a 5 per cent stake in the sports radio station. However, Pacific Star General Mananger Barrie Quick described the share option offer as a "straight commercial arrangement" and the station's total independence would be maintained.

AFL chief operating officer Ben Buckley defended the league's potential conflict of interest in accepting share options from SEN, saying it did not necessarily indicate the AFL making a direct investment in the company. "We are not involved in management, we are not involved in the board. We have no other formal association other than as a licensor of our rights. Our relationship with SEN won't be any different than it will be with 3AW or Triple M or the ABC," Buckley said.

Buckley said the biggest difference in the new radio agreement was the fact that every match of every team in the competition would now be broadcast by at least one station into that team's home city. Previously, that had only been guaranteed for non-Victorian clubs, with 16 occasions in 2006 in which matches involving Victorian teams were not broadcast back to Melbourne from interstate, because these matches clashed with games being played in Melbourne at the same time. And often these games were also only shown only on Pay-TV, meaning many Victorian footy fans had no access to any coverage of their team for some matches interstate. "It was vital for the AFL that supporters could access radio coverage of their team for every single match they play and this was the highest priority for the AFL in our negotiations with our partners and represents a major step forward for fans," he said.

Buckley said the AFL was close to entering into new agreements with Adelaide's 5AA, Geelong's K-Rock and the National Indigenous Radio Service. He said the league wished to pay tribute to the networks that had again committed to broadcasting football over the airwaves over the next three years, adding the addition of SEN would ensure a greater domestic coverage than ever before.

Sources: The Australian; AAP, afl.com; Patrick Keane, AFL media release; ABC media release