Is free-to-air coverage still the North Star of sport media strategy?
Why the real value of Netball Australia’s broadcast deal with Nine extends far beyond free-to-air reach and into the power of Nine’s broader media ecosystem
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Football Australia announced a new 2-year partnership with Coca-Cola, which joined as the Official Supplier of Australia’s senior national teams (CommBank Socceroos and CommBank Matildas) across key international windows including the FIFA World Cup 2026™ and the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027™
NBL and WNBL announced the return of HoopFest thanks to a renewed 2-year commitment by the WA Government (via Tourism Western Australia) which will see an extended 5 day festival in January 2027 - Virgin Australia was also named Presenting Partner of the festival which forms part of its new 3-year deal as the Official Airline Partner of both competitions
Surfing Australia welcomed Southern Cross University as an Official University Partner and Major Partner, which will support and activate across eleven of Surfing Australia’s major events, spanning the Australian Boardriders Battle series, women’s and girls’ surf festivals, junior and high school pathways, and the Australian Surfing Awards
Qudos Bank Arena is set to be renamed ‘Afterpay Arena’ after the leading buy-now-pay-later platform secured Naming Rights to the iconic stadium as part of a 5-year deal
Carlton FC welcomed Fisher & Paykel and Haier as new partner, joining as a Gold Partner across both the AFL and AFLW programs - The partnership also extends into the Club’s corporate network, with the company coming on board as a Platinum Partner of the Carlton IN Business Network
Collingwood Football Club and AIA Australia extended their partnership - the health insurer will continue to support both its AFL and AFLW programs
Port Adelaide FC announced the extension of its partnership with the SA Attorney-General’s Department which will contribute more than $570,000 to the Santos Aboriginal Power Cup across the next 4 years
Tasmania Devils inked a new 2-year deal with AlphaFit which joined as the Official Sports Supplement Supplier and will support the VFL/W high-performance programs with trusted, HASTA-certified sports supplements
Fremantle Dockers and Containers for Change WA expanded their ongoing association through the 2026 AFL season
Penrith Panthers announced a new partnership with Ringers Western for the 2026 season - The Australian apparel brand supplied suits for players at the club’s season launch, and the Panthers commercial staff, executives and board members are set to wear the range throughout the year
Gold Coast Titans and Magic Millions announced a new 3-year partnership that will see two of the city’s most iconic brands join forces to support and elevate the club’s NRLW program
Supercars and Tyrepower extended their partnership through to 2030, building on a relationship spanning more than two decades, dating back to the introduction of the Tyrepower Cutting at the Bathurst 1000 in 2006
Newcastle Knights unveiled a groundbreaking merchandise capsule collaboration with Australian lifestyle brand, SŚAINT
Commonwealth Games Australia and Valour unveiled the Australian Team’s 2026 green and gold uniform which is set to be worn on the world stage in Glasgow - the design was revealed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
Adelaide 36ers secured a new, elevated 3-year agreement with Revo Fitness which will see the Revo brand feature prominently on the front of the 36ers’ playing jerseys (it was previously featured on the playing shorts)
Melbourne Victory and Western Sydney Wanderers secured new partnerships with Aussie that will see Australia’s largest retail mortgage broker take identical kit, broadcast and community assets across both clubs
Athletics Victoria extended its partnership with VicHealth, continuing its commitment to protecting young people from the harms of vaping through new initiatives delivered via UNCLOUD
Australian Professional Leagues and Paramount Australia and New Zealand announced a 3-year broadcast partnership extension - under the agreement, every Isuzu UTE A-League Men’s match and every Ninja A-League Women’s match will be available live on Paramount+
The Yard Gym became a Global Nike Training Partner, marking Nike Training’s first global gym partnership - the pair will co-create training experiences, activations and community events, and Nike Training will be TYG’s exclusive partner for footwear, apparel and accessories
South Sydney Rabbitohs launched ‘Rabbitohs Social’ - a Members-only, troll-free community platform (app & website) built exclusively for South Sydney supporters
The Enhanced Games recently listed on the stock market and its price has suffered a major fall of over 40%, wiping out almost $800 million in market value
Los Angeles-born Alo Yoga opened its first Australian store in Chatswood Chase, Sydney, with massive queues
AFL announced that Dom Dolla is set to turn Marvel Stadium into a ‘Superclub’ during Grand Final week, in partnership with Untitled Group and Frontier Touring
The Street Social, a new winter waterfront event series in the Docklands, is set to launch next month featuring a lineup of Melbourne food favourites, DJs, silent disco sessions, AFL live screenings and family friendly entertainment
NBL announced its pre-season tournament, the CODE Sports NBL Blitz, will be held in Bendigo, Victoria ahead of the Hungry Jack’s NBL27 Season
XXXX dropped its giant 4-metre ‘Postcode’ cans over Sydney Harbour to fuel the QLD vs NSW rivalry ahead of NRL State of Origin - In a battle extending beyond the field, fellow Lion brands XXXX and Tooheys will go head-to-head alongside their home state teams, the QLD Maroons and NSW Blues
St George Illawarra Dragons officially opened the $65million Bruce Gordon Centre at the University of Wollongong’s Innovation Campus - Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, NSW Minister for Sport Steve Kamper and Federal Minister for Communications and Sport Anika Wells were among a long list of dignitaries on hand
Guest Writer: Dr Hunter Fujak
Dr Hunter Fujak is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Management at Deakin University and a thought leader in sport fandom, consumer behaviour and media. He is also the author of Code Wars: the Battle for Fans, Dollars and Survival, and is a leading authority on Australia’s sport landscape. Dr Fujak has written for The Guardian and The Conversation, and has been featured in The New York Times, BBC World News, and Forbes. Dr Fujak's research has appeared in leading academic journals including the Journal of Sport Management, Sport Management Review, European Sport Management Quarterly, and Media, Culture and Society. He has worked in sports and general consultancy for Australasia's largest sporting leagues and events, including the Australian Open (tennis), the Rugby World Cup, and Cricket Australia, as well as for some of Australia's most prominent brands, including Telstra, Sportsbet, Foxtel, and Woolworths.
In today’s article Hunter unpacks why the real value of Netball Australia’s broadcast deal with Nine extends far beyond free-to-air reach and into the power of Nine’s broader media ecosystem.
Enjoy the read!
Is free-to-air coverage still the North Star of sport media strategy?
In April, Netball Australia announced its return to Nine for the period 2027 to 2031. On face value, the deal feels like a familiar Australian sport media story: a property seeking audience growth via the reach afforded by free-to-air television.
For netball, history looks to be repeating. The sport returns to Nine a decade on from the launch of Suncorp Super Netball with a relatively similar strategic imperative; to convert one of Australia’s largest participation sports into a more visible, commercially sustainable, mainstream media product.
Yet the sporting and media landscape of 2027 will be very different from that which surrounded Super Netball’s launch in 2017. Accordingly, the broader question is whether free-to-air can still perform its established strategic role as the default engine of audience reach, discovery and growth.
Is FTA still the ‘go-to’ growth engine for sport audience development?
Television has long been central to establishing the cultural hierarchy of sport. Across markets, broadcast exposure has helped determine which sports have become embedded as mainstream.
Australia has been no different. For decades, commercial free-to-air coverage represented the strategic north star for aspirational sport organisations. For leading properties, it delivered self-perpetuating mass reach, routine visibility and reinforcing cultural positioning. For emerging properties, it has offered a primary mechanism to achieve audience exposure and discoverability for fan development.
In an analogue media environment, mass reach and discoverability mattered enormously. Television held a dominant share of people’s media consumption, and viewers switched between a small number of channels such that sport content could be easily discovered. The capacity of Australia free-to-air in this respect was reinforced by anti-siphoning regulation, historically suppressing Foxtel’s penetration rate to well below global benchmarks (circa 30%).
But that logic has undergone long-term structural erosion. ACMA data shows that the proportion of Australian adults watching free-to-air television in the previous seven days declined from 71% in 2017 to 52% in 2025. In 2012, television reached 62% of people aged 16+ between 8pm and 10pm daily. Television’s decline has been sharpest among younger demographics: among 25–34-year-olds, free-to-air viewing declined from 62% to 30% over this period. Conversely, paid subscription service uptake has climbed from 25% to 68% in the general population. Notable here is that Foxtel Media reports that 70% of Kayo’s audience is aged between 18 and 54.
These shifts complicate the long held strategic binary equating free-to-air coverage to reach and exposure and subscription platforms to revenue maximisation. This raises a critical strategic question for sport organisations: how valuable is mass media reach if it is increasingly concentrated among older viewers? For sports seeking to grow their fan base, free-to-air may still deliver visibility, but its ageing audience profile makes it a less straightforward tool for long-term fan development.
Nine’s real superpower: media synergies and sport co-promotion
While free-to-air may be losing some of its old power as an engine for sport audience growth, Nine’s strategic value as a media partner is arguably stronger than ever. Nine offers a distinct commercial advantage within sports rights negotiations that remains comparatively underacknowledged: an ability to leverage synergies derived from its integrated media ecosystem to cross promote its sport properties.
In a forthcoming research paper, I test whether this kind of co-promotion effect occurs in practice by longitudinally examining the distribution of sport coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald (Nine) and Daily Telegraph (News Corp). The results show a clear relationship between media-rights ownership and coverage allocation. Most notably, netball coverage in the SMH halved whilst doubling in the Daily Telegraph in the year media rights moved to the latter (2022).
Figure 1: Netball and rugby union newspaper coverage, 2019-2023.
This abrupt shift in editorial attention is illustrative of the broader influence our largest media organisations have in shaping the visibility, legitimacy and commercial momentum of sport properties. Whilst the above illustrates changes in coverage allocation, the study also captured striking examples of News Corporation’s rapid negative shift in editorial tone towards rugby union upon the discontinuation of its partnership.
The data illustrates that media partners do not simply telecast fixtures, but can be critical in shaping the broader attention environment surrounding a sport. This is where Nine’s contemporary value becomes especially significant. With an asset portfolio spanning linear, 9Now, Stan, publishing, radio and digital media, Nine offers a distinctly compelling partnership proposition.
A distinguishing feature of mainstream sports is that they occupy a cultural position broader than their individual matches. For a sport such as netball, the strategic goal is thus not simply to be available to watch, but to be made visible, talked about, commercially packaged and culturally legitimised. Nine’s integrated media ecosystem gives it the ability to support that process through heightened editorial attention and amplification across its media ecosystem.
Notably, Nine now largely stands alone in its capacity to offer this kind of amplification. Foxtel’s sale to DAZN has diminished News Corporation’s equivalent media synergies.
The real test of the Nine deal: from reach to attention
Netball Australia’s agreement with Nine will test two propositions at once. First, whether a larger free-to-air footprint can still help the sport reach beyond its existing audience base. Second, whether Nine’s wider media ecosystem can convert availability into attention and relevance. This makes the deal more than a free-to-air story as may have been the case in the past. It is a test of whether integrated media ecosystems can generate mass attention for aspiring sport properties in a fragmented media market. For sport properties, the strategic question is no longer “Can we get free-to-air coverage?” but rather “Can our media partner help make us matter beyond the match telecast?”.
Sending a big shout out to those who’ve recently stepped into new roles across the sports industry! 👇 👏
Alana Portlock - Head of Consumer at Perth Bears (previous Football Australia)
Bridget O'Sullivan - General Manager - Experiential & Sponsorship Management at Bastion (Promotion)
Rohan Sawyer - Chief Operating Officer at Brisbane Lions (previous Bastion)
Sarah Udovenya - Brand Marketing Senior at Nike (previous FutureBrand)
Marc Belteky - Senior Football Brand Specialist at Nike (previous The Players’ Tribune)
Will Hartnell - Client and Growth Partner at Scout (previously Geelong Cats)
Daniel Giese - Chief Results Officer at Incrementum Advisory Group (previous Carlton FC)
Jess Keily - GM Audience & Growth at Incrementum Advisory Group (previous WA Cricket)
Camryn Liddle - Participant to Fan Executive at Incrementum Advisory Group
Alex Brown - AI Solutions Architect at Sports Cloud Australia (previous iReel)
Ben MacCormack - Chief Executive Officer at Basketball South Australia
Peter Munt - Head of AFL/W at W Sports and Media
Dorian Hughes - General Manager at VenuesWest (previous City of Melville)
Paul Malina - launched Backline Sports & Entertainment (previous TGI Sport Australia)
Andrew Abdo - Chief Executive Officer at Tennis Australia (previous NRL)
Board Appointments
Geordie Miles - Venue Management Association
Tony Peake OAM - Swimming Australia
Jessica Hansen OLY - Swimming Australia
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