TV chiefs claim sports-swap win

Nine and Seven have both claimed success after the networks swapped major sports for the summer.

Rafael Nadal of Spain in action during his men's singles final match against Novak Djokovic of Serbia at the Australian Open. Picture: AAP

Nine Entertainment Co chief Hugh Marks has conceded the network’s coverage of the Australian Open made a $10 million loss in its first year, but is confident the two-week tennis grand slam will deliver a positive return for the broadcaster by next year.

The comments come as Mr Marks and Seven chief executive Tim Worner both claimed success over their summer coverage of tennis and cricket, respectively, after the networks swapped the long-held rights to the respective sports last year.

Nine claimed it attracted 5.4 per cent more tennis views than Seven last year in the 25-54-year-old category, while Seven’s coverage of the Australia-Sri Lanka cricket Test beat the men’s tennis semi-final on Friday night in a disappointing result for Nine.

The three-set women’s tennis final on Saturday night, however, was watched by an average 1.171 million people across the five metropolitan areas, up almost 15 per cent on the same women’s finals shown by Seven last January.

Mr Marks claimed Nine could break even on tennis as soon as next year, while declaring its inaugural coverage of the Australian Open a commercial success and much more cost-effective than covering cricket.

Mr Marks told The Australian that Nine had spent $55m covering the Australian Open this year in rights and production costs and wrote about $45m in advertising revenue, compared with an outlay of $105m on the network’s last summer of Australian cricket a year ago for $70m revenue. This suggests Nine was losing as much as $35m a year on its cricket broadcast.

“I’m confident we can get that (revenue) figure to $50m-55m next year and then up another $10m in the years afterwards,” he said of the tennis. However the pressure will be on Nine’s sales team with the annualised cost of the broadcast scheduled to increase to $60m a year from next year.

“We could not be happier to have the tennis … and it validates the way we were thinking. This is a business decision and ultimately we are answerable to our shareholders.”

Nine is in the first year of a six-year $346m broadcast deal with Tennis Australia, with Seven West Media and Foxtel starting a $1.2 billion six-year contract with Cricket Australia that effectively sees Seven and Nine switch sports after four decades of coverage.

Mr Marks played down fears some advertisers may have been unhappy with Nine’s tennis coverage, which came under fire early in the two-week tournament.

“We’re up about 1.5 per cent from Seven last year (for ratings) we think. We sold it (to advertisers) on the basis that we would at least match what they did, so we think we can get price increases on our packages next year. And we have had addressable (or targeted) advertising across 9Now in digital and got a premium from clients for that, and sold it out.”

Mr Worner declared the free-to-air broadcaster’s inaugural cricket coverage a success, which he said delivered record television commercial share and beat the pre-summer projections that the network had sold its advertising on.

“Across summer so far, and it’s not over yet, we’ve had 31 days with a 40 per cent-plus commercial share, and that is huge for Seven. I mean that is not something Seven has had in the past,” Mr Worner told The Australian.

“That is a huge change in our audience numbers for summer. No network has ever recorded that many days of 40 per cent-plus commercial share and there’s still two weeks to go,” he said.

With more cricket to come, including the Test series between Australia and Sri Lanka and more Big Bash League games, Mr Worner is “hopeful of actually surpassing that number”.

Mr Worner said Seven was the only network to have grown its audience share over the summer, and “obviously a large part of that is due to cricket”.

He acknowledged there had been “a fair bit of conjecture prior to the season that people wouldn’t watch cricket for one reason or another, but that hasn’t been the case at all”.

“We’ve been really happy with how cricket’s gone on Seven and how cricket’s gone in general. Australians have proven that it’s their No 1 summer sport.”

Seven shares the broadcasting rights to the Big Bash League with Foxtel’s Fox Cricket, unlike in previous years when the popular tournament was aired on Network Ten.

“I think the audiences for it (BBL) have been as strong this year as they were last year, and at times they’ve been a lot stronger,” Mr Worner said, referring to the combined audience figures at Seven and Fox.

The Fox Cricket channel has accounted for 99 of the top 100 programs on Foxtel over summer and 5.7 per cent of all TV viewing across free-to-air and subscription services. This gives the network a high-rating sport outside the winter football codes and motor racing.

“We’re creating a year-round proposition that is not only a premium service to view, but also an environment that guarantees our advertising partners a highly targeted, engaged audience across all the mediums and technologies that fans use,” Fox Sports chief executive Peter Campbell said.

An average 327,000 viewers tuned in to one-day internationals on Foxtel with 218,000 for BBL matches and 247,000 for Tests simulcast with Seven.

And despite not having any sports rights during the summer, Ten Network chief executive Paul Anderson said its decision to bring forward I’m A Celebrity … Get Me out of Here to begin during the tennis had been validated.

“I’m A Celebrity is recording its highest shares ever in our target demographic of under 50s. It is dominating its 7.30pm timeslot, with almost double the audience of a Big Bash game. On many nights, it has beat the tennis too. It is the No 1 show in under 50s and all key demographics.”