Plus minuses: Paramount has to pull its socks up to be a worthy AFL broadcaster

Before the AFL fishbowl gets too excited about the prospect of a billion-dollar payday from one of America’s biggest media conglomerates, it’s worth hitting the pause button and taking a closer look at how Paramount’s first foray into Australian sport has unfolded so far.

Because that’s something that fans of the A-Leagues just can’t do right now: pause. Or rewind, or fast-forward. Welcome to the so-called streaming revolution. Take it from football fans – it’s not always what it’s cracked up to be.

The face of Wanderers coach Mark Rudan is an accurate depiction of how many A-League fans feel about Paramount+.Credit: Getty

The beautiful game in this country is eternally grateful for the five-year, $200 million deal that Ten and its parent company Paramount (formerly ViacomCBS) signed last year to show the A-Leagues, which at the time had been cut loose by Fox Sports and were in desperate need of a broadcaster willing to underwrite the men’s and women’s domestic competitions.

After a period of painful inertia, which has sadly bled into this COVID-affected season, it was the liferaft the once-booming A-League needed, and the injection of fresh ideas and expertise from Ten – as well as its bold commitment to make football Australia’s No.1 sport – was whole-heartedly embraced by all concerned.

But it’s fair to say that some aspects of the coverage on Paramount+, Ten’s new paid streaming service, have left a lot to be desired – and it should serve as a cautionary tale for the AFL, as it ponders hopping into bed with a new broadcast partner from 2025 onwards.

Gillon McLachlan and his fellow AFL House executives are in the United States this week and were due to meet in New York with Ten’s co-chief executives Beverley McGarvey and Jarrod Villani, who are planning an audacious bid for footy’s entire suite of content. Most observers anticipate that footy will end up tied to incumbent broadcasters Fox Sports and Seven, but the interest from cashed-up foreign entities like Paramount and Amazon will ensure a fascinating process.

The biggest gripe of football fans with Paramount has been with the app itself, which costs a very reasonable $8.99 per month. But Paramount+ is built for entertainment: movies, TV shows, documentaries and the like. It is clearly not built for sport. There is no dedicated sport section; users have to wade through a labyrinth of different titles to stumble across the options enabling them to watch football – even if you know exactly what you’re looking for, it can still be hard to find.

Then come the problems associated with actually watching the football. Not all of it can be blamed on Paramount – some of the early audio and video issues, which have since been ironed out, stem from the Australian Professional Leagues taking on production responsibilities themselves and using a new company, Global Advance, with untested technology.

But a lot of it can. If you happen to miss kick-off, bad luck – viewers can’t choose to watch a game from the start. It’s live or it’s nothing. When your UberEats driver arrives with dinner, you can’t pause it to answer the door. When a player scores a stunning goal, you’re at the mercy of Paramount’s directors if you want to see an instant replay because you still can’t rewind yourself. And you can’t watch multiple streams at once. For those used to Kayo, Optus and Stan (owned by Nine, which publishes this masthead), it feels almost prehistoric.

Fans have been complaining about these issues for months. For shift-workers and people with young children, the impact it has had on their ability to watch and follow the A-Leagues has been profound, and equally frustrating are the long delays before full match replays and mini-matches are uploaded. The APL aren’t happy either, but nothing has changed, and with only a few games left in the men’s season, it’s probably not going to until next season.

It’s hard to imagine the AFL simply copping that sort of treatment – that is, perhaps, more reflective of the A-League’s lowly position in Australia’s sporting pecking order than anything else. But it’s a red flag worth noting.

There’s something else that McLachlan will also be chewing over: Saturday nights.

As part of their deal, the A-Leagues are guaranteed that one men’s game every Saturday night will be shown on Ten’s main channel. Sources say it is baked into the contract, which explains why Ten hasn’t demoted it to a secondary channel despite continued poor ratings. That’s a problem for the AFL, which surely wouldn’t be content with playing second fiddle to the A-League or even to have, say, a round-ball derby leading into a clash between Carlton and Collingwood.

Ten has proven in the past, long before Paramount bought it in 2017, that it is eminently capable of elevating a sport through its coverage. The network almost single-handedly turned cricket’s Big Bash League from a hit-and-giggle to a fixture of Australian summers, to the point where Fox and Seven were determined to snatch it from them; the BBL’s stasis is their problem now, but it was only ever a success because of Ten.

Footy fans also have fond memories of watching AFL on Ten between 2002 and 2011 – particularly the famous ‘five-minute warning’ which used to supersede the countdown clock.

Many in the industry question whether the revelations of Paramount’s interest is just a ploy to squeeze more money out of Fox Sports, which simply can’t afford to lose the AFL. Others say it’s dead serious. After missing out on the English Premier League rights, it desperately needs more premium sporting content to make Paramount+ a must-have streamer.

But if it wants to play at the big table, it needs to do better.