It was never going to be easy, but it’s fair to say Channel 10’s attempt to turn A-League football into a mainstream TV sport is off to an extremely rocky start.
Faced with intense competition from the Australian Open and Big Bash cricket, last Saturday night’s A-League broadcast fell to its lowest figure this season with a national audience of just 58k (45k metro) tuning in for the clash between Sydney FC and Perth Glory.
Most concerning for the network is the damage the poor football figures are doing to the networks overall broadcast share.
Channel 10’s primary channel attracted just 3.2% of the viewing audience on Saturday night. By comparison, Channel 9 won the night with a share of 27.5%, while Channel 7 secured 16.1% of viewers. The ABC was also well ahead with 14.3% of the audience watching its primary channel, while SBS maintained a share of 4.3%.
Prior to the launch of the season, Channel 10’s Sport Sales Director Nick Bower expressed confidence in the networks ability to find a new audience for the code, stating the network had “a fantastic pedigree in making pay-tv sport big”, adding that in the first year of the networks Big Bash deal it “grew the audience for that sport by 3.7 times and it continued to grow.”
The A-League is now attracting some of the smallest free-to-air broadcast audiences for sport in Australia. The competition is now falling behind other codes, including Super Rugby, Super Netball, AFLW and the WBBL.
Ratings for the code have been on a gradual decline since the season opened in November when a national audience of 146k (102k metro) tuned in for the Saturday night clash between the Western Sydney Wanderers and Sydney FC. Channel 10 was likely hoping to build an audience for the sport over summer before the big football codes return in March
Channel 10 is understood to have invested $200 million to secure broadcast rights for the men and women’s A-League competitions for the next five years. As part of the deal, every match of both competitions is broadcast live on the recently launched new streaming service Paramount+.
The network is yet to provide any data regarding how the investment in football has benefited subscriber numbers. COVID-19 has significantly disrupted the current season with a number of matches being postponed and rescheduled.
Doesn’t help that they don’t show local games. Just a random match once a week. You can’t follow your team without subscribing.
Totally agree
No wonder when 10 show “Ambulance Australia” as the programming on Satirday night when the A league is being presented
Another attack on soccer by a xenophobic soccer hater who probably supports the AFL or NRL
Hi Gary – there is nothing xenophobic about the article, or about Kevin. It is outrageous for you to suggest it simply because he is commenting on the ratings performance of a sport on a TV network.
Soccer is constantly under attack from a range of journalists from other sports such as rugby league, cricket and basketball. News Limited media does not even have a full time soccer writer anymore and barely even mention the A-League. This is no accident. News Limited even tried for days to trash the Matildas by going on about a supposed ‘toxic culture’. I respect people more when they are up front and say they hate soccer. Not ones to pretend to write objective articles about the sport.
Hi Gary – this article is only about the ratings performance of the A-League on 10. It’s not about the sport or any views therein. We are not anti-Soccer (or any sport) at TV Blackbox, and honestly I think you need to apologise and withdraw your comment about Kevin. It was ill-informed and, at best, knee-jerk.
Pretty poor number but not really a surprise given the current chaotic covid situation with numerous postponements etc.. I’m a keen fan but struggle to know what matches are on and when at the moment (The Keepup site doesn’t help – can’t manage a chronological listing of fixtures. Terrible). So its a bad moment for the A League, crowds are poor, as they are for the BBL and AFL women, though I suspect their TV numbers are OK.
There is a big audience for football here, but much of it is focussed on the EPL and other o/s leagues; the football community is also very divided re the quality of the A league. This is a problem for football leagues world wide, but not one that other local sports have to deal with. So I think it will take a while to build a regular TV audience.
There is no shortage of watchable games (eg last night’s MV v SFC) but the one you mention was one of the poorest games ever. I’m a Sydney FC fan but I think I would have switched to the tennis about 20 minutes in had I been watching.
About 10 or 15 years back one of the FTA channels was showing AFL live in Sydney on Saturdays and were getting way less audience than SBS. I suspect the numbers have picked up since then but it obviously took a while; Ten have 5 years to build an audience for the AL so hopefully the same thing will happen.
If you asked soccer nuts why it is easy….the coverage is terrible, the advertising to know when who is playing is terrible, paramount is a web app which is terrible on a tv played as a web not app like the other streaming services, the one camera per ground approach is terrible…..watch the epl and see how its done
I agree the Streaming service through my TV has put me off watching all the games now
Sheez, those numbers really are awful.
The only upside for the Aleague/Australian soccer is that Ten/Paramount have likely paid massive overs for the rights – the APL has getting far more in $ than is justified by the level of interest in the competition. From memory, they got lucky in the last major deal they did with Foxtel (around 2015), with Foxtel paying way more than would have had they known how far ratings and general interest would fall.
The problem is that 10 are doing little or no promotion of their sports product. They should be aggressively advertising upcoming matches throughout the day as getting A league stars in for cross promotion on other 10 shows. Its in their interest to do so.
Unless you watch a lot of channel 10, but how do you know they aren’t advertising it through the day.
I think you’ll find the problem is that very few people care to watch the A-League.
Do you watch Channel 10? Early in the season there were tons of ads and promotions for the A-League men and women. It seems to have dropped over the last few weeks, but I can understand that given it might make 10k difference to the number of AL viewers, but using that time to promote other shows would increase viewers by a lot more. It’s completely uneconomic to be spending any more time flogging a dead horse.
Another football bashing article by a writer who couldn’t contain himself once the rating numbers came out. He conveniently forget to mention the rating benefits of the national teams such as the Matildas and Socceroos? I wonder why? As for Chanel Ten you don’t create an audience with one match a week. They get back what they put into it.
Hi Anthony – please point us as the “ratings benefits” of these matches.
I would also note that you conveniently forgot to mention the rating benefits of the national teams “such as” the Socceroos and Matildas.
The article clearly indicates the facts of the matter, yet you do nothing to refute them (because you can’t, they are facts). What’s your point? The awful A-league viewing figures don’t matter because the national teams have pulled in great viewing figures (although you provide zero evidence of this)?
I think ch 10 are doing there best with showing internationals and the a league BUT they need to have some other a league content on free to air eg panel shows and maybe a highlights show it just lacks punch putting a game on sat and Sunday with no preview of the round ahead . You need to step up and get rid of some
of the crap ch 10 keep re hashing
For a start Chn 10 is not promoting game .
It’s not free to watch A league any more other than the Sat night game ..
The New bosse of A League have sold the punters down the river for a cash incentive .
Streaming service is a joke . Ads during play break continuity .
Pre game runs to long.
Tried to subscribe to Paramount with no success
Frustrating
I also tried to subscribe to Paramount plus but they don’t support Samsung Smart TVs, so I miss out on watching my team.
Yes, the A-League was against the Australian Open and the Big Bash Semi-Final, so numbers weren’t going to be that high, but the numbers are still extremely low. Considering that SBS beat Ten in the shares isn’t a good thing.
Ten doesnt seem to know how to advertise some shows. Very little promotion for the A-League matches on Saturday nights on Channel Ten. All i’ve seen are ads for Paramount+. Maybe a “Before the Game” type panel show might help the lead up for the game, rather than Bondi Rescue repeats. The A-League Highlights Show on Monday nights on 10 Bold gets zero promotion neither (any numbers for that?)
The inconsistency of match scheduling, both in the A-league and FFA Cup has been, tear your hair out stuff.
The games are poorly advertised, and even when a game is supposed to be broadcast, over the past couple of months especially, it gets cancelled without the punters being informed. I even started a Twitter account in order to get some sort of heads up.
By the way, are the Jets still in the A-league or have they been rissoled to the NNSW NPL?
It certainly doesn’t help that the Paramount + streaming service is so bad. No pause, no rewind, no copy for later. You can’t even start the game from the beginning when starting late. Pathetic really.
The fta version is better but who knows the game is on? There is ZERO advertising of any of the games.
Oh and by the way, it’s the Western Sydney Wanderers.
It’s absolutely infuriating that the Paramount plus app doesn’t work on Samsung Smart TVs, even if you are willing to pay the price. If Channel 10 have a five-year contract they’re going to have to find a way so everyone can see their favourite teams on a regular basis or sponsors will not want to support the clubs.
Acces to the games on the Paramount app is seriously bad, if you miss the start and want to watch from the beginning non existent. No record, not able to download and view at a time that is more suitable. Then you don’t know when games are on as covid has caused havoc with the scheduling.
It doesn’t help that the broadcast is only one game per week so if you have no interest in those teams, you may not care to watch.
Also Paramount Plus is garbage. Stuttery vision, poor replays, buffering and all the other issues.
If they didn’t roll around like primadonas every time someone almost touches them I would watch it a bit more.
It should go back to foxtel.
The main problem is that not everyone has steaming ability and paramount is to difficult to navigate and after half time you have to reset it as it doesn’t reappear to show second half
I would hav thought that with all the ex kayo commentators 10 and paramount could do a lot better in presenting our game as was the case with kayo
Who watches FTA TV anymore? I have a family of 6 – 3 TV’s only 1 has an antenna (watched the ashes) everything else watched is streamed. I have the app to watch a league – started dodgy but getting better every game, so glad it’s off foxtel.
I tried watching the Victory v Sydney match on 25th Jan. To say it was hard to find is a understatement so to get over it I went to the local sports bar. The staff could not locate it on 10 play or did not have Paramount + so I went home to try on laptop. Could not find it here either on 10 play really quite terrible. Why do CH10 make it so hard to find it? Give it back to someone who knows what they are doing like SBS.
Chanel 10 has no idear how to promote the game . I see more basketball than football. They have no sports show and the round up show is on a Tuesday at 9am . The other problem is pay TV is just to expensive. If you have optus, Stan,and prime that is close to 45 dollars a month not to mention all the others. At least 2 free to air games a week are needed, proper promotion of both the women’s and men’s game, it is not rocket science but commercial chanels seem to make it so.
It’s a shame Channel 10 cannot get the broadcast right, it’s terrible really.
I took up my free Paramount + option and was so glad I wasn’t paying for it and really couldn’t wait for it to end. As mentioned by others here, poor streaming, buffering is poor, that strange half time thing, lacklustre commentators etc etc…. I’m glad it’s off Foxtel but would certainly not be paying for it in its current format and performance.
I watch the Saturday night A-league match on 10 every week, but prefer not to subscribe to Paramount because I already subscribe to Foxtel. Also, it seems that Samsung tv owners can’t access Paramount. Not a good partnership as things stand.
Kevin is a small time Journo trying to push an AGENDA
Hi Christopher – what AGENDA is that?
The games are awful this year, coaches just push back 5 or 6 to stop scoring.we stopped going to and watching games this season
Sydney FC if they score are always parking the bus
The broadcasts commentary is very poor, the commentators are not even at the grounds but in a studio at 10.
The in studio discussions are so rehearsed and we know that, but don’t make it so obvious
The experts have no charisma, why they took on Andy Harper is any bodys guess and Simon Hill is no Brenton Speed, Mr Hill has no excitement in his commentary very one pace.And employ Bozza please
What makes English football so great no matter what division is playing..
The crowds and the commentary.
Going to commercial breaks during the match is [word removed-Ed]. – speaks volumes about the broadcasters.
Get woke, go broke.
RIP A league.
Coverage of the A league has always been too Americanised. Now, with the pre-game coverage going on for almost as long as the game itself, with people that can barely string a sentence together, (Archie Thompson being a prime example), and a commercial break in the middle of each half, it has become un-watchable. I live within walking distance of Brisbane Roar’s home games and I have no idea when they are playing or how they are going. As for calling it ‘soccer’, well, it’s goodnight from me.
I have mentioned about the audience numbers for 14 May 2022 – Channel 10’s primary share has hit rock bottom, languishing at a depressing 2.8% share. It was beaten by Seven, Nine, ABC, SBS, 7mate, 7Two, 10 Peach, 10 Bold, 9Go! and even 9Life. Sadly, A-League soccer doesn’t rate high in Australia given that it is a niche sport. There’s not a lot of promotion in soccer in Australia and the soccer crowds are very dismal. Normally Perth viewers get the soccer game on 10Bold so that they don’t want to clash with 10 News First. (10 News First gets very high numbers than soccer). The point that soccer is not popular in Australia. AFL, NRL, Rugby Union, Cricket, Tennis are the more popular sports in AUstralia than soccer.
I was watching the a league semi final last night between Adelaide utd v central coast and I was watching how to eat and buy a McDonald’s hamburger when Adelaide scored there 2 nd goal brilliant coverage ch 10 you have a long way to go and learn how to cover football