Foxtel slams proposal to put women’s sport on free TV list
Putting women’s sports on a government list designed to keep key games freely accessible for Australians would be a mistake, entrenching a “grass ceiling” on the players and sporting codes, Foxtel says.
The Albanese government is reviewing the “anti-siphoning list”, a law introduced in the 1990s to prevent key sports from being put behind pay TV paywalls. The legislation lists the key sporting events that must sell their broadcast rights to free-to-air networks.
Adding women’s sports to the anti-siphoning list won’t achieve anything, Foxtel says.
After a surge in support for the Matildas at the FIFA Women’s World Cup last month, which broke Australian free-to-air TV viewing records, the government rushed to put their future games on the list.
But that does not solve a complex situation where Australians view shows on subscription platforms such as Netflix, through free broadcast services like 9Now or 10 Play, or on the likes of YouTube.
Two key players in the mix, subscription broadcaster, Foxtel and Free TV, which represents the Seven, Nine and Ten networks, have very different visions for what the future of sports rights negotiations should look like.
Foxtel commissioned a paper by research firm Charles River Associates that concluded that, in most cases, women’s AFL, NRL, FIFA Women’s World Cup, cricket, netball and basketball were already more accessible than their male counterparts.
“The benefits of explicitly including women’s sports on the anti-siphoning list would likely be symbolic at most: there would be no practical effect on the extent to which these sports are freely available to the public because they would be freely available anyway,” CRA’s Geoff Edwards wrote.
“The only clear beneficiaries would be the
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