TV bosses urge AFL not to continue with 16-minute quarters beyond 2020 season

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan has weighed into the debate over whether shorter quarters should be the new normal after it was revealed it will play a role in negotiations over the next broadcast deal with TV bosses.

The AFL will likely revert to its usual match timings in 2021. Picture: Getty

Reduced quarters are unlikely to feature beyond this season, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan has revealed.

Quarters have been shortened this season to 16 minutes plus time-on – trimmed from the usual 20 – in an effort to ensure that if games need to be played on a shorter turnaround in order to complete the season, they can be.

But he said it was a feature that is unlikely to be carried into 2021.

“I don’t think so,” McLachlan said on 3AW.

“We’re looking at things all the time, but the 20 minutes (cut) to 16 is for the flexibility we need to get through this season.

“Our broadcasters understand that, and our supporters and others, but it’s not something that we’re contemplating for next year.”

Broadcasters have told the AFL they want game lengths to remain the same.

The AFL has slashed quarters from 20 minutes to 16 minutes plus time-on this year, but Channel 7 and Foxtel are opposed to making it a permanent move.

Network negotiators want 20-minute quarters plus time-on enshrined in new TV rights deals.

Three-hour match productions, featuring quarters of about 28 or 29 minutes, are considered ideal to protect advertising revenue and maintain viewer interest.

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The AFL will likely revert to its usual match timings in 2021. Picture: Getty

A push by the league to reduce the halftime break from 20 minutes to 15 minutes has support.

But talks over a reworked TV deal for this season and a proposed two-year extension with Seven and Foxtel have stalled.

The AFL stands to lose about $150 million in TV rights cash this year as a result of shortened game time and five fewer matches because of the coronavirus crisis.

The revised payment by broadcast partners in 2020 will be crucial in determining cash distributions to the 18 clubs, the extent of industry staffing culls and a new wages deal with the game’s 850 players.

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, a member of the AFL’s “war cabinet”, has led the charge for permanently shorter quarters to better suit the lifestyles of modern-day fans.

“We’re competing against movies. We’re competing against Netflix. We’re competing against concerts. We’re competing against people going to restaurants,” McGuire said last week.

But fellow “war cabinet” member and Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon is opposed to the plan.

“I love the game in its traditional length. We shouldn’t use this time to experiment excessively just for the sake of it. People are coping with enough change already,” Gordon told the Herald Sun.

AFL Players’ Association president Patrick Dangerfield has warned a separate push to reduce club list sizes would almost certainly require the shortening of matches.

AFL broadcaster Channel 7’s chairman Lewis Martin.

“At Geelong last year we used 39 players … the requirements of a (normal) season – 22 home-and-away games, plus finals (and) the lengths of games – requires a significant list size,” Dangerfield said.

“But if you reduce list sizes, well how does that look if you are expecting players to still play 130-odd minutes with only lists of 30?

“It’s just improbable. It would be near impossible to do and to still provide the same level of quality in the play that we currently have.”

The AFL pockets an average of $417 million-a-year in TV rights as part of the bumper six-year, $2.5 billion deal with Channel 7, Foxtel and Telstra that expires at the end of 2022.

A new deal for 2020 is expected to be 50-75 per cent of the original agreement.

The NRL has celebrated the game’s return from a 10-week hiatus by announcing a new billion-dollar TV broadcast deal with Foxtel and Channel 9.

Less than an hour before Brisbane and Parramatta were scheduled to resume the season at Suncorp Stadium, the NRL confirmed major partner Foxtel would continue to broadcast the game until the end of the 2027 season.

Foxtel already had a deal with the NRL until the end of 2022 but has agreed a five-year extension in a billion-dollar boost to the code.

Nine have agreed to a revised deal that will mean they broadcast the game until the end of 2022.

Coaching great Denis Pagan this month urged the AFL not to mess with the fabric of the game in the wake of the crisis.

“I just hope the people (at the AFL) making the decisions accept that they don’t own the game. They are only caretakers while they are in the positions they are in now,” Pagan said.

“The game will look after itself. We don’t need to be changing things for the sake of it.”

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Originally published as TV bosses urge AFL not to continue with 16-minute quarters beyond 2020 season