Australia’s top sporting codes have blasted a law keeping major sporting events on free-to-air television as “unfairly anti-competitive”, “unreasonable” and “inappropriate”, calling for AFL, NRL and Australian Open games to be cut from the list of protected events.

For decades, a law known as the “anti-siphoning scheme” has stopped pay television broadcasters from buying the rights to air certain sporting events “of national importance and cultural significance” unless a free-to-air network has had the first opportunity to acquire them.