Sport codes join Foxtel in fresh bid to relax anti-siphoning list

its Patrick Delaney not Richard

To increasingly privatise the viewing of sporting codes has long been the desire of Foxtel. What Foxtel is proposing is a cash tax (rather than inconvenience of ad breaks), for as many peak sporting codes as possible. Now the question is, does the Australian taxpayer own a percentage of equity in peak sporting codes? The answer is yes.
The privatisation of peak sporting codes by applying a viewing tax on them is theft of largely public goods. The ovals pools and basic sporting facilities that most of these athletes trained on through their lives, the training provided by Government sponsored bodies such as the Australian Institute of Sport, the ovals and toilet blocks provided by Councils and state governments for sporting codes as they gather players of which some filter to the top, and the often quiet massive arena investments, is equity in these sporting codes paid for by the tax payer. To ask the average Australian to pay again to watch what they invested is morally bad. It is wonder the people proposing this privatisation can sleep soundly at night, on this, another attempt at a progressive theft of largely public goods.
As an ex Australian Olympian in sailing (1988), I trained out of clubs provided land by local Councils, supported by State and local Governments quite often through grants, was coached by Yachting Australia, and no doubt the tax payer had enormous equity in my appearance in Korea. This is the thin edge of a wedge where the tax payer pays twice for something that was not created, developed or financed by Fox Sports or Foxtel. The ledger is certainly heavily weighted toward the public equity paying the majority of direct and indirect payments to sporting codes. In 2012/13 just the Australian Institute of Sport spent $311m. Fox Sports total expenses(not just programming cost) in 2011/12 were only $338m. There would be hundreds of millions more spent by Government, and far outweighing the puny Fox Sports contributions.
Bad plan.

How unfortunate that the Sporting bodies themselves in the desire for the dollar are jumping into bed with Foxtel who are well know for not giving too hoots for the general public and are only concerned about extorting as much as they can from Australians.
I can see that this i heading in a direction where the only avenue to watch sport such as NRL will be to have to jump through Foxtels package hurdles at exorbitant cost.

Widespread changes will be ineffective until there is a challenger to Foxtel. In the short term if there are any changes to the list then the government needs to take the opportunity to get a victory for the people and force a change to the Foxtel subscription packages, mainly either the ability to subscribe to only the sport package without any additional packages or subscribe to individual channels a-la-cart.

There are some good points raised above but you are all a bit deluded by the Free TV’s apparent altruism.
Do you really think the FTA networks hold on to the anti-siphoning list for the good of the Australian public – rubbish.

With the exception of the ABC which is government funded (and SBS to a lesser extent which is partly gov funded), 7, 9 and 10 drive the almost all their revenue through advertising revenue. That needs rating.

2 main genres seem to drive the high ratings in this country- Sport and Reality Shows (cooking, singing, dating, weight-loss. S**t, aren’t we bored of this rubbish by now?)

The FTA’s are handful of channels and they are crammed with reality shows and old movies (the new putty filler of all TV schedules). They don’t have enough airtime to run all the live sport they have exclusive access to.

The FTA networks are like a spoilt kid with too many toys. They don’t play with most of them but they won’t let anyone else play with them.

So here is the issue, we have a right to free live sport coverage – great. I’ll be honest, I don’t have Foxtel because it’s too expensive and I don’t want the 25 other channels I have to pay for to have Fox Sports and ESPN. I love the EPL, so I pay about $80 a year through Fox Sports on Demand to have it live streaming and on demand through the internet. Cheap as chips and well worth it.

I enjoy my AFL too and lucky for me I like the Swans and live in Sydney but my friend is a Carlton supporter and very rarely gets to see a game so he is forced to go to the pub to watch it on Foxtel (Live too thank you Free TV)

Isn’t it better to have access to watch the sport you want to watch even if you have to pay for it (even if it is only the cost of a few beers at the pub) rather than not be able to watch it at all or have to wait for them to show it delayed so that their “1 hour” show (that runs for 75mins courtesy of all the extra ads they cram in) can finish first?

As for increasing competition to allow broadcast rights to increase – what’s wrong with that. Maybe with more money for the FFA, they will be able to feed more back into developing talent so that our Socceroos can get out of the qualifying stages of the World Cup.

Love all the predictable hate for Foxtel.

Their sports channels are a billion times better than FTA’s when it comes to sport. Better accompanying programming, more choices, all in HD, less ad breaks, better commentators.

Why do you all think the FTA’s want to hold onto sports – to help the Aus public?!

I watched the AFL grand final on the weekend and was appalled at the amount of adds – at least one add at every goal scored. It was terrible. Having foxtel I had switched over earlier only to discover that Fox footy had no rights to the actual game itself. What would be the problem for the game to be live and ‘free’ (not free of adds!) on FTA but available also on Foxtel for those who can afford and choose not to be bombarded by adds driving them to distraction and completely ruining the atmosphere, continuity and appreciation ofr the game?