Good get Jack
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Foxtel wins in AFL carve-up
Caroline Wilson
The Age
February 6, 2007
VICTORIAN football fans will see a reduction in free-to-air television coverage from this season, with pay TV network Foxtel emerging as the unofficial winner of the battle to carve up the AFL television fixture.
After 12 months of often bitter negotiations with Channels Seven and Ten, Foxtel is expected to announce this week that it has secured half the competition's home-and-away games over the next five years.
In a deal brokered in the final stages by AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou last Friday, and to be signed in the next 48 hours, Foxtel will pay Seven and Ten $50 million this season and an indexed amount each year until 2011 for a significantly increased number of exclusive games and new regular timeslots.
Channels Seven and Ten finally relented to the pay TV provider following an undertaking by Foxtel to provide an annual $10 million of advertising and marketing, easing the load on the free-to-air networks.
Seven's first choice commentary team of Bruce McAvaney and Dennis Cometti will now call both the Friday night and 2pm Sunday fixtures, with Tim Watson and David Schwartz doing special comments.
Without the Foxtel deal, Seven would have been forced to televise four AFL games a week - providing a bonus for fans, but a headache for the network, which would have faced serious clashes with its new V8 Supercars contract and a potential lengthy court battle with the AFL over its attempt to televise Friday night games into Sydney and Brisbane on community Channel 31.
Seven and Ten were also reluctant to telecast rival games in direct competition with each other on Saturday nights - a prospect also eliminated by the Foxtel deal after the AFL had refused their joint push to relax the Saturday night fixture.
The AFL's broadcasting sub-committee was due to meet yesterday over the Channel 31 issue, a problem which is now certainly redundant.
Foxtel will televise its matches on the Fox Sports Three channel and on Austar in some regional areas of Australia.
In a major coup for the pay TV network, it will get to alternate with Channel Ten in having first pick of the two weekly Saturday afternoon games, and will also gain significant momentum in its push into South Australia and Western Australia.
Foxtel will televise live and exclusive twilight games every Sunday during the season and has also gained an unprecedented four live fixtures into Adelaide and Perth respectively involving local teams. In the past those games had to be shown free-to-air.
Foxtel has also achieved a deal for an annual outlay of $10 million less each year than Seven and Ten had previously insisted on.
With the AFL fixture to be announced just 15 days before the opening of the NAB pre-season competition, Foxtel will also gain access to an exclusive pre-season semi-final.
The biggest change for Victorian fans will be a reduction in the number of free-to-air games each week from five to four, with the early Sunday afternoon game - previously telecast by Channel Nine - now going exclusively to Foxtel. The pay TV operator will also televise Sunday twilight games.
But the AFL has refused Foxtel's demand for a guaranteed fixture on each weekend of the June split round, along with the network's bid to rid its matches of ground signs involving competitors such as Optus.
With Ten and Foxtel splitting the Saturday afternoon games and alternating each round with the first choice of the two, Channel Ten will then show the best Saturday night fixture with Foxtel televising the other Saturday night game.
Seven's AFL boss Ian Johnson said his network would now work to produce a weeknight football program and he would not rule out scheduling it on Thursday night against Nine's The Footy Show.
With Clinton Grybas, the former face of the Fox Footy Channel, now expected to return to that network and former Nine commentators such as Brian Taylor and Dwayne Russell in the mix but not yet guaranteed positions, Johnson denied the delay in securing a deal had hurt the job prospects of football commentators and production staff.
"I have told every AFL talent manager that I don't want to stand in the way of anyone doing a deal with a rival network," he said.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2007/02/05/1170524030567.html
