Sport takes the lead in the SCA-Seven merger

Nathan Jolly

March 27, 2026 11:35

Sport takes the lead in the SCA-Seven merger

Interim CEO John Kelly at SCA's Sydney showcase

It only took a few days from the newly minted Seven-SCA merger being finalised for the benefits to become quantifiable for SCA’s head of sports, Ewan Giles.

Southern Cross Austereo has just wrapped a three-city showcase of its newly combined company, filling rooms in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane with executives and talent as it presents a unified front to advertisers.

Seven’s shareholders voted for the merger a few days before Christmas. The Ashes test in Sydney ran from January 4 to 8, and the merger closed on January 7. Triple M’s Ashes commentary — which, before the merge, got around 400 downloads a day — jumped to 20,000 for the latest Test.

“Our biggest ever Test Match ever on Listnr was a Sydney test match — and that’s through no small part of the support we got through the coverage on Seven,” Giles said at SCA’s Sydney event on Thursday night.

Sport is the biggest winner in the merger, according to Seven’s director of network sport, Chris Jones.

Listnr is launching Club Cast, a series of bespoke half-hour podcasts built around every club in the AFL and NRL, using content from the Triple M network, SCA’s suite of sports podcasts, and Seven television shows.

Jones also revealed that Seven’s Commonwealth Games coverage will be available to stream on Listnr and will be live on Triple M overnight. He said, however, the Rugby League World Cup in October and November — which Seven has locked in the broadcast rights to for 2026 — is where the synergies between the merged companies will be most apparent.

“It’s the first time that we’ve got to go to market together,” he said. “So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna have the traditional Channel Seven call, and then on 7plus, we’re gonna be able to get the the Triple M call, which is a whole lot more fun and a different audience, and we’re gonna be able to put that on the Seven [footage] and put that on 7plus.”

Giles elaborated further: “It is the first time where sales and content, TV and audio have been completely aligned … we can show the entire industry what we can achieve working together.”

Chris Jones

SCA also used the opportunity of Listnr’s fifth birthday to announce its new influencer offerings and an expanded focus on video for the Listnr ecosystem.

Listnr launched in March 2021, following three years and millions of dollars spent developing the platform. It added its AdTech Hub in March 2024 and became profitable in the second half of that same year. The platform has passed 2.5m signed-in users.

John Kelly, SCA’s interim CEO, said: “What sets Listnr apart is that it is owned by Australians and built for Australians, giving us the ability to continuously evolve our technology roadmap, respond to audience behaviour, and deliver solutions tailored to our business partners – capabilities not possible for platforms without full local ownership and control.”

Kelly’s comments appeared to be a none-too-subtle dig at SCA’s competitors ARN, whose multi-decade deal with US conglomerate iHeart restricts its control over the technical capabilities of its podcast platform. It also highlights SCA’s ability to be agile when new technologies emerge, such as the rise in video podcasting.

Listnr is betting big on video, as leading global audio platforms Apple and Spotify increase their investment into the medium, and Youtube remains the most popular place people consume podcasts. The merger also means that SCA owns video-on-demand platform 7plus, with its 15.2m users.

Listnr has been testing video advertising with a number of its podcasts, combining host-read ads with video content. It has also launched its Influencer Extender program, through a partnership with marketing platform Fabulate.

This program works for advertisers by “combining SCA talent with Fabulate’s AI-powered data-driven platform to identify and activate relevant creators at scale.” This allows campaigns to reach “beyond traditional audio audiences”, according to SCA.

Olly Newton, executive head for Listnr commercial, said its next phase of growth is “expansion into multi-format audio, video, creator-led content and influencer collaborations.”