As an AFL headline, it was one of the more impressive as Gillon McLachlan moved towards the conclusion of his 11-year stewardship of Australian rules football: A whopping and legacy-sealing $4.5 billion seven-year broadcast rights deal worth an extra $70 million annually to the game until the end of 2031.
McLachlan and his team had managed to stick with what they knew in the game’s media partner for the best part of more than three-quarters of a century, Channel Seven, along with its long-time pay TV partner Foxtel and Telstra, rejecting a $6 billion, 10-year offer from Paramount Plus.
Channel Seven abandoned Saturday free-to-air AFL footy.Credit: Artwork: Matt Willis
The players would be richer, the clubs would be safer and AFLW and all the game’s markets would be developed and expanded. And the fans would never be better off.
The McLachlan announcement came at the start of the 2022 finals series, but the deal did not kick in until he was long gone at the start of 2025 season. Nor did the hidden nasties: Notably the fact that the AFL had chosen for the first time to charge its supporters to watch the football on its most traditional day, and to place every game on a Saturday behind a paywall.
Former AFL chief executive and now Tabcorp CEO, Gillon McLachlan.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
Not one non-Victorian club of the six contacted by this masthead is happy with the new deal. At least four are deeply concerned about the changes the new deal has forced upon the fixture and the loss of audiences on a Saturday. Generally the clubs based in Sydney and southern Queensland believe the removal of Saturday night football from Channel Seven has handed the NRL a costly free kick.
Media and club bosses unwilling to be quoted on numbers for fear of antagonising head office say that the loss of the free-to-air Saturday night game has cost the AFL conservatively 400,000 viewers each week – even allowing for the boosted Fox Footy rating and the estimated uplift in subscriptions of 100,000.
While it is true that Seven is more than making up the numbers with Thursday night football across each round and with the new and semi-regular Sunday night games, the decision to turn its back on a regular Saturday night free-to-air audience smacks of an own goal by the competition.
Rugby league supremo Peter V’Landys.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The AFL was the last bastion of Saturday night free-to-air footy and the only code in Australia to boast the fixture. The NRL and its significantly smaller match attendances is the current winner because its supporters have long been used to paying for the Saturday night game.
Incredibly, most clubs agreed the hidden costs of the rich new deal had not become clear to them until this season. Club chiefs say they will raise the issue when they next meet with head office as a group in Melbourne in early June, but all agree the AFL prioritised money over those struggling and developing markets McLachlan promised the new arrangement would benefit.
Falling TV audience numbers for those clubs with fewer free-to-air games has also proved to be an issue with major sponsors.
While McLachlan would have rightly received a significant bonus for the rich broadcast deal, which has currently left so many clubs disenchanted, he did not act unchecked in placing Saturday football behind a paywall. The negotiations were closely scrutinised by his commission subcommittee of Richard Goyder, Robin Bishop and Paul Bassat and Andrew Dillon, along with strategy boss Walter Lee, who were among the executive team who worked closely on the deal.
Seven West Media contributed an extra $20 million per year – from $150 million to $170 million – to retain its weekly three games, along with finals and exclusive rights to the grand final and the Brownlow Medal count.
They were also granted the game’s digital rights. But Foxtel needed some serious bang for its buck, given it was contributing close to 70 per cent of the rights cost.
Not only did Fox Footy gain exclusive rights to every game each Saturday, but, to boost Foxtel and Kayo subscriptions early in each season, football fans in South Australia and Western Australia were forced to wait until round nine to watch their clubs live on Seven or 7plus if their home club played on a Saturday.
For the first time, Crows or Eagles fans without pay TV had to watch their teams on the game’s so-called Super Saturday on a 90-minute delay.
Worse in the developing NSW and Queensland markets, those fans had to watch their beloved Swans or Lions on delay on free-to-air until round 11 – this weekend.
Reigning premiers the Brisbane Lions have been a big loser to date from the new broadcast arrangement, having played just two prime-time games on Seven over the first 10 rounds. The drop in the Lions’ TV numbers has not been lost on their major sponsor – Youi Insurance rightfully asking why the broadcast audience is relatively low, given the club’s champion status and strong performances this season.
Current AFL CEO Andrew Dillon.Credit: AFL Photos
The Lions had to sacrifice their season-opener against Geelong from free-to-air after the AFL was forced to shift the game due to Cyclone Alfred. Gold Coast’s TV audience drop has been real, but less dramatic, given the club’s improvement this year and the fact the Suns have not enjoyed much prime time in the past.
Dillon and his fixturing team could not help the cyclone. But given Dillon’s stated intent to push the code in northern markets via the fixture, and his innovative and relatively radical opening round, it seems inconceivable the AFL boss would disenfranchise northern Australian rules supporters at a time the game has set an ambitious target to reach one million participants across Queensland. That this has occurred while the two AFL teams are flying looks like an opportunity wasted.
The two Sydney clubs also remain disenchanted with the game’s decision to kill off Saturday free-to-air football, given their general preference for Saturday over Sunday games. The Swans’ SCG crowds and TV audiences have always flocked to the Saturday twilight fixture, which has now locked out tens of thousands of broadcast fans until this week, when Sydney supporters can watch Foxtel games on 7plus or 7mate with no delay.
Two weeks ago, an estimated TV audience in the Sydney market of just 10,000 viewers watched the Swans’ narrow loss to Essendon in the Saturday twilight game at Marvel Stadium. Had the game been shown on Channel Seven into Sydney live as it would have been last year – and not on a 90-minute delay – that audience would have sat between 60,000 and 90,000 in the Sydney market alone. That’s not a drop in the ocean, given the battle for audiences in the game’s toughest market.
The AFL has done the right thing by the two Sydney clubs in fixturing the next derby in round 20 on a Friday night in late July. Although, both clubs hold fears for the attendance numbers that night given the game is at Engie Stadium.
South Australian football supporters were locked out of all live free-to-air games until round nine when the Showdown was staged. The Crows now look like genuine finals contenders this year, but the new broadcast deal has savaged their Saturday TV audiences while benefiting their attendances at Adelaide Oval, which have all exceeded 40,000.
On the Thursday night of Gather Round, a combined national audience of more than 1.2 million watched Adelaide host Geelong. The previous week, the Crows’ top-of-the-table clash against Gold Coast was shown on delay into South Australia and on Fox Footy, with a total audience of about 470,000. Adelaide hosted Carlton in round eight in the generally popular Saturday twilight time slot, with the TV audience sitting at 578,000.
Not only has the new broadcast deal disadvantaged the non-Victorian states and football supporters existing in lower socioeconomic groups, the elderly and rural sectors, but it has disenfranchised Tasmanian fans for whom Saturday night football on Seven was a staple. The basic Kayo package costs $25 per month, but that is due to increase in June and remains prohibitive to many Australians struggling during a cost of living crisis.
AFL boss Dillon has combated the deep grievances around the decision to place Saturday football behind a paywall by arguing that Channel Seven telecasts the same number of games per week (three) in this broadcast agreement as it did in the last. All finals remain free. And the view from head office is that this is the first year of a seven-year deal, and that paying for football on a Saturday will become accepted over the broadcast journey.
Dillon pointed out through his media team this week that Seven-produced Thursday night games are up 4 per cent on 2024 and Friday nights are up 1 per cent. The Sydney market is up 7 per cent on average for Thursday and Friday nights. And night attendances, according to the league, are up on Thursdays (15.7 per cent), Fridays (5.7 per cent) and Saturdays (12.7 per cent).
But it cannot be denied that roughly half-a-million viewers per week have been stripped from the AFL’s Saturday night TV audience. The broadcasters argue that of all four TV footy nights – including Sundays – Saturday is the least popular and was in decline in broadcast terms. But to remove it from the free-to-air landscape altogether has come at a significant cost and removed what for years has been a clear advantage in comparison with the NRL.
And there has been at least one significant change since Gillon McLachlan pledged in September 2022 that: “Broadcast live and free nationally on the Seven Network and 7plus digital will be AFL on Thursday nights, Friday nights, selected Saturday nights, marquee matches…”
What changed is that the AFL and its free-to-air broadcast partner Channel Seven have prioritised Thursday nights all season long at the expense of McLachlan’s “selected Saturday nights”, which explains why the perfectly placed Dreamtime game has moved to a Friday night.
No club disputes the decision to place Thursday night in as a permanent fixture. But what most club bosses are wondering is whether McLachlan and his team could have taken less money to give the Seven network one more game on a Saturday. Or at least sacrifice some Foxtel cash for supporters in non-Victorian states, who have been robbed from watching their home teams on free-to-air until round nine in the case of West Coast, Fremantle, Adelaide and Port Adelaide. Worse, in the case of the non-traditional northern footy markets, until round 11.
The new deal has six years to run beyond 2025 and, although club chiefs are not happy about some elements of the rights agreement, they agree little can be done to change it given the sensitive nature of the media landscape and the realisation that such a lucrative deal could not be achieved now. The new deal is worth $643 million per year – $70 million more annually than the last agreement – and the major beneficiaries have been the players but not the coaches, who by and large feel aggrieved and disrespected.
Ten per cent of the broadcast rights money has been pledged to develop the game, but there remains a lack of faith across the clubs, and even inside head office, that Dillon and his struggling executive have the right team in place to comprehensively do the job.
“We want to be the game for everyone,” said McLachlan when he announced the deal, which was presented as one of his key parting priorities at the time.
“And this partnership will help us to do more to engage with all communities, in all states and territories and across Indigenous and culturally diverse communities.”
Except on Saturdays.
