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World Cup: SBS deal a disaster for Optus, but Christmas in July for football fans
It's the deal of a century.
It's a modern day version of Kerry Packer's sale of the Nine Network to Alan Bond for a billion dollars, only to buy it back three years later for less than a quarter of the price.
It was announced on Thursday that SBS Television, the spiritual home of football for the past 30 years, will now broadcast all of the FIFA World Cup matches from Russia after Optus ceded its exclusivity for many of the remaining games it had originally acquired from SBS.
But it still leaves one question unanswered.
why did a small broadcaster with a mainstream event 'on-sell' its exclusive rights to a guaranteed ratings winner?.
SBS's top 10 programs this century are all football related — seven of them from the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, played in a similar time zone to the current tournament in Russia.
Since 2001 only eight of SBS's top 20 rating programs are not football related.
In an era when public broadcasters are facing an uncertain future in Australia, and with further government funding cuts predicted, SBS's ownership of the World Cup rights may have been seen as a licence to print money — given SBS, unlike the ABC, has advertising.
Back in 2011, SBS Television secured the rights for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups continuing an affair that began with the 1990 edition in Italy.
At the time, SBS Managing Director Michael Ebeid talked up the acquisition.
"It is our dedication to football and to giving the most comprehensive live and free-to-air television coverage in Australia that cemented our bid," Mr Ebeid said.
But in March 2016, details emerged of a 'swap' deal, rumoured to be worth $8 million, where Optus would hand over one English Premier League match per week, for three seasons, in exchange for the right to stream all 64 matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, 39 of them exclusively.
SBS's dedication to Australia's football loving public seemed to have waned.
Initially, many of the taxpayers that funded SBS's purchase of the FIFA World Cup rights did not complain when being asked to fork out — again — in order to watch every game via what seemed like a reasonable $15 subscription to Optus.
But the Optus coverage took a dive from the opening match.
There was a public outcry when many subscribers logged on only to find an error message.
The outrage taught us two lessons.
The World Cup, and football, is no longer a minority sport in Australia, and the Prime Minister understands the football loving public votes.
Following a call from Malcolm Turnbull to Optus chief executive Allan Lew, the telco acted quickly offering to refund subscription fees and allow SBS to broadcast the remaining group-stage matches.
Thursday's announcement that all remaining matches will now be shown on free to air makes one wonder whether there are still concerns the technology is capable of meeting the demand.
Speaking to The Ticket, Decider TV's Kevin Perry said the episode had been embarrassing to Optus and other sporting bodies were no doubt watching on.
"Various sporting codes are all looking towards these internet broadcasters — Optus, Telstra, Google and Facebook — to come in and start bidding big sums of money to drive up their broadcast revenue," he said.
If the Optus experience causes other providers to shy away, the sports bubble might have reached its limits.
"If companies like Telstra and Optus decide it's too big of a risk to be broadcasting sport over the internet, if they look at it and say, 'the NBN's not fully rolled out yet, and, there's so much risk, and any small glitches can cause enormous publicity and issues for their companies' they might decide it's not worth investing in Australian sport," he said.
It's not been a good World Cup for Optus, or the Socceroos.
There will be a winner though — right now, it's SBS and the Australian sports loving public for whom it's Christmas in July.
If the unexpected gift is free to air coverage of Russia 2018, then Santa Claus resides in heaven, and he probably looks a lot like Les Murray, the man who did more than any other in introducing the World Cup to Australian television audiences.
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