How viewer behaviour is changing the sports rights landscape
Wade Maris, EVP & Commercial Director, The Sporting News, explains why the horse may have already bolted when it comes to traditional media forms controlling how Australian consume sport.
Less than three months ago, I wrote a piece for Mumbrella discussing that, whilst the free-to-air networks raised some valid concerns around their lobbying of the Government for streaming rights to be included under the anti-siphoning laws, there are a lot of other areas that needed to be addressed outside of straight protection and inclusion of streaming under the anti-siphoning laws.
In the world of sports and media, three months is a long time.
Since this piece was published, many of the local major broadcasters and media owners have made cuts and redundancies in what is a challenging and evolving media landscape.
Additionally, we’ve seen Amazon and the NBA announce a 11-year global rights partnership from 2025/2026 season onwards. On the back of this deal, one of the NBA’s current incumbent rights partners in Warner Bros Discovery is questioning the ruling as it had a matching clause in its contract.
Where this goes is to be determined, but the issues being discussed come down to interpretation of what is deemed ‘matching rights’, and streaming and online is central to the debate, especially with Amazon being a technology company, first and foremost.
What is playing out in real time with here is something we should all be watching in Australia.
A month ago, there was an story in the SMH discussing how the NRL may take its rights out early to market to generate greater competitive tension before its current rights deal is up in 2027.
The reason for potentially going to market so early is that the anti-siphoning streaming change in legislation probably won’t be implemented by Government until 2026. Essentially this means that the major sports governing bodies could sell their streaming rights to Amazon, Google or Netflix now before any legislation is changed ahead of their current deals ending in 2027.
As the move to streaming continues, the adoption to online TV, or OTT, will only continue to grow by 2027.
For example, the recent State or Origin decider had a total audience of 3.65 million, with an extra 865,000 or 25% watching via B-VOD. What will this percentage growth on streaming look like in three more years?
On the social and short form video side of sports rights and consumption, Reddit has announced in the last week that had brokered a content deal and highlights partnerships with the some of the major governing bodies in the USA including the NBA, NFL and MLB. which revolves around sharing advertising revenue from consumption on Reddit platform – which reaches more than 500 million users a month. On the back of this announcement, Reddit’s share price rose 4%.
If and when this kind of partnership is rolled out in Australia, and what impact it would have on other traditional media’s sports rights its yet to be seen, but it’s another example of how sport governing bodies are focusing on partnering with platforms and destinations that have a mass audience, deep engagement and connect with the next younger generation of fans.
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