Sport off free TV? Tell ’em they’re streaming

Let’s talk national campfires, Pat Cummins steaming in from the Randwick end, the pinstripe mob that runs this joint, and the redoubtable Senator Sarah Hanson Young.

See, in the beginning, there were lots of national campfires where, as a people, we would regularly gather to clap our hands and warm our souls. Watching the same huge sporting event was one of them. There have been few more unifying national moments in my lifetime than when Australia II – and don’t you forget it! – won the America’s Cup back in 1983.

Annually, the Boxing Day Test, various World Cup finals, football grand finals, Ashes Tests, Wimbledon finals, Melbourne Cups are other examples, while the Olympics are a quadrennial national delight. Before the mid-1990s, we never had to think about who had the right to watch such things.

For as Australians, we all knew our birthrights included: fresh air, clean water, lots of sunshine AND, most crucially, watching every ball of our mob destroying England at Lord’s, without having to pay for the privilege. But in the mid-90s pay TV companies arrived, where the idea was that they could buy up the rights to broadcast certain sports, and the only way you could watch them was if you paid a certain amount per month.

At the prospect of having to pay to watch an Ashes Test – the most unheard of thing anyone had ever heard of, and more un-Australian than wearing a collar and tie to the beach – there was an outcry. In response, the government of the day introduced anti-siphoning legislation, which established that certain sporting events could not be the exclusive preserve of the pay-TV mob.

Rather, free-to-air networks like Channel Nine - owners of this masthead - had to have first rights to broadcast them. Over the decades since, that anti-siphoning legislation has been progressively updated as ever more sport ended up on pay TV.

For how long will home Test matches remain on free-to-air TV.Credit: Getty Images

Now stay with me, sports fans because this is where it gets complicated.

The big advent in recent times has been the ability to stream free-to-air channels over the internet. This democratised access to free-to-air sport, by ensuring access for those who don’t have FTA reception or a working aerial – getting it on the likes of 9Now.

Sporting events were now available from the free-to-air networks to either watch live, or stream, and watch it long after it finishes at your leisure.

However, this is only where the FTA networks owns both the broadcast and digital rights. This season, AFL games shown on Seven’s broadcast channel are not available on the streaming version of the channels. This was also the case with cricket. In both cases, Foxtel owns those rights.

Nine CEO Mike Sneesby.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The issue before us now is that the current anti-siphoning legislation doesn’t recognise the growing number of people who watch free-to-air sport digitally. The danger is that when coming sports events and comps go on the block, gargantuan mobs like Amazon will hoover up all the digital rights, meaning the likes of Channel Nine, Seven and Ten won’t be able to broadcast the events on their digital platforms – as was already the case this year with AFL and cricket.

Stay with me, I said, tree people!

Because of all this, it is the view of the former CEO of Fairfax, Greg Hywood – who now chairs Free TV Australia – that armageddon is upon free-to-air TV sport unless the legislation is amended to acknowledge the fact that the rights of free-to-air television to broadcast under the anti-siphoning legislation, includes the capacity to put it out on their digital platforms.

Without those amendments, he says, the danger is that sports really will sell their rights only to paying services, and deny the digital rights to Channel Nine et al. This would mean that for those Australians without pay TV, it is only those whose televisions are with antennae, that could watch, say, the NRL grand final. This would diminish the audience for free-to-air networks right now by as much as a third – and growing – and lessen the amount the networks could pay for the rights. In the end, they would inevitably not be able to compete and stop broadcasting sport on free-to-air networks.

“The federal cabinet must make a stark choice,” Hywood wrote in the Financial Review this week. “Does it want Australians to have long-term access to free sport or have it go behind expensive paywalls owned by the big international streaming services? If it approves the legislation that is being put forward by Communications Minister Michelle Rowland that is what is going to occur. And soon – probably within the life of the next government, whoever that may be.”

Strong, yes?

No more Cummins steaming in from the Randwick end, unless you have the money to fork out for pay-television or streaming services. Another national campfire goes out, as our national splintering proceeds.

On the other hand, that’s just Hywood. As the chair of Free TV Australia, it’s his job to say that, surely?

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Ditto, the CEO of this company, Mike Sneesby who has also been strong on the need for the legislation to be amended, telling me on Wednesday, “All Australians have a right to expect access to our most important sporting moments live and free. The anti-siphoning framework exists to ensure that they get this access. But today more and more of us choose to watch our free sport via smart TV apps like 9Now. The updated anti-siphoning framework, if not amended, ignores this fact and puts at risk Australians’ right to watch free sport.”

On the other hand . . . he’s the boss of Channel Nine, so what the hell else could he say?

Prima facie, they may be right, but they are pinstripe people, making corporate arguments – and their skill may lie in overstating things like that. Which is why the views of Senator Sarah Hanson-Young interest me so much. For of all the politicians, the far-left Greens Senator has been the strongest. As a rule, I suspect, the only common ground between her, Hywood and Sneesby on sportspeople would be their right to trial by jury, to echo Fran Lebowitz, but on this one, she puts it more strongly than they do.

When I talked to her on Wednesday she said: “Hywood and Sneesby are absolutely right. Without a doubt, if the legislation is not amended, millions of Australians will be left without being able to access sport for free. Sport will just get locked behind a paywall, and you won’t even be able to see our beloved Matildas without getting your credit card out. That is not right, and it could happen within three years. By 2027 half of Australian homes will not have an aerial television, meaning that if they don’t have pay-tv, or the paying apps, they won’t be able to watch.”

She also raises another interesting point.

“We’re a sport-loving nation. It’s part of who we are. Taxpayers contribute huge amounts of money to elite sport, and part of the return for that money should be the capacity to watch it without having to pay corporations for the right. It is a pillar of our national unity.”

I’m with her.

As a nation, when Cummins steams in from the Randwick end, it is important that you, me, Senator Hanson-Young and everyone can lean in to warm the cockles of our souls by watching him, for free.

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