The stars of Seven Network have come together in a new campaign calling on the Federal Government to amend its proposed changes to the anti-siphoning regime to protect Australians’ access to free sport content across broadcast and digital technologies.
The “We are Aussies, of course I want free sport” campaign launches today and is running across all major social media platforms. It highlights that the current Bill before parliament only protects Australians’ access to free sport via broadcast TV but not if they watch TV through the internet via an app like 7plus.
Seven’s campaign supports the broader industry campaign from industry group Free TV Australia that is seeking some important changes to the prominence and anti-siphoning Bill to stop free TV content from disappearing behind paywalls.
Created by Seven’s in-house creative agency Red Engine, Seven’s campaign includes Bruce McAvaney, Ricky Ponting, Justin Langer, Matthew Richardson, Abbey Holmes, Mel McLaughlin, Matt Evans, Jason Richardson, Juliet Godwin, Emma Freedman and Mark Beretta.
Australia’s pre-eminent sports broadcaster, Bruce McAvaney, said:
“Australians shouldn’t be denied access to free sport just because they don’t have an aerial. If you want to stream sport over the internet, the anti-siphoning scheme should ensure internet delivered sport is also free.”
Seven West Media Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, James Warburton, said:
“Seven supports most parts of the Communications Legislation Amendment (Prominence and Anti-Siphoning) Bill 2023, but there is a major omission from the Bill.”
“It only guarantees free sport content for Australians that have an aerial. It does not guarantee people will get free sport if they choose to stream it over the internet or don’t have an aerial. No aerial means no guarantee that Australians will have access to free sport in the future.”
“As the Bill is drafted now, there is nothing stopping Amazon, Kayo, Prime and Netflix from buying all the digital rights to Australians’ favourite sports and making them pay if they want to stream sport over the internet,”
he said.
“The Albanese Government needs to amend the Bill to include the free digital stream alongside the free broadcast stream so that all Australians can access free sport, regardless of whether they have a TV aerial or not.”
More information can be found here on the Seven West Media website and at Free TV Australia’s Free For Everyone.
I’d favor Amazon assuming control of sports broadcasting in Australia since they would undoubtedly offer proper 4K HDR quality. Seven doesn’t even make the effort to produce compelling propaganda. Hard Pass.
What a bunch of hypocrites Channel 7 are. They do this all the time. Like the last time when the AFL rights were up for grabs. They ran a negative campaign against the other networks, saying do you want to see your local team play behind a paywall. So seven gets the rights in the end, and the games are still behind a paywall at first.