All sport will shift online, says iFlix

Moves will be made as soon as existing contracts with ­traditional broadcasters start expiring.

iFlix co-founders Mark Britt, chief executive, and Patrick Grove, chairman

Asian media entrepreneur Patrick Grove predicts major sports will telecast mostly via online streaming services as soon as five years from now.

Mr Grove, who has an estimated fortune of $841 million as a member of The List — Australia’s Richest 250, published by The Australian, said the major sports around the world would seek big contracts from the global streaming giants as soon as existing deals with ­traditional broadcasters started expiring.

His iFlix, the Asian version of Netflix, recently signed a string of deals with US sports, including the college basketball “March Madness” national championship, to stream them directly to consumers in several Asian countries.

Mr Grove’s prediction also comes after AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan had told the top club bosses that he had already been approached by global internet and streaming giants to buy rights from 2023 onwards.

The AFL is currently in the middle of a six-year $2.6 billion broadcast deal with Seven West Media, Foxtel and Telstra, the largest broadcasting contract in Australian sporting history that was signed in 2015, when the league courted streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon but was unable to convince them to join in the bidding.

Mr Grove has built iFlix with co-founder Mark Britt — a former Nine Entertainment executive — into a company with 15 million customers in 22 countries in Asia and Africa from its Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, headquarters, growing at about 12 per cent. He said sports would become a natural fit for the big streaming companies.

“It is very likely a number of them will go direct to customers when their existing contracts ­expire,” he told The Australian. “It will be better for consumers. They will just pay for the sport they want, direct.”

Mr Grove started his career in accounting for the former Arthur Andersen in Sydney before leaving to form a string of internet companies, many of which went on to list on the ASX. One was ­iProperty, sold to REA Group in a deal worth $751m in 2015. By then Mr Grove was living in Asia and he and Mr Britt formed iFlix, and have since gone on to raise $US220m across several funding rounds.

Earlier this year, the business started dedicated channel ZSports in seven markets after previously signing deals to broadcast Indonesian soccer — Mr Grove said many viewers watched sport while sitting in the notorious Jakarta traffic — and to sponsor a Malaysian soccer tournament.

So far, Mr Grove said, the channel had focused on overseas sports that had high interest among viewers but previously had little coverage in the region.

“At the moment there is a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of what we call ‘dark sports’,” he said. “Sports that have more than 10,000 users of demand per month, but have no coverage in our markets.

“Quite a large number of sports fit into this category.”