Ten thwarted by Seven in battle for tennis broadcast rights
The Seven Network has this morning confirm it has retained the broadcast rights to the tennis for a further five years.
In a deal thought to be worth around $30m a year Seven will continue to broadcast the Australian Open, despite strong interest from the rival Ten network.
As recently as last week Ten CEO Hamish McLennan told the Mumbrella360 conference: “Tennis Australia are in exclusive negotiations with Channel Seven at the moment but I think they would be mad not to put it to the open market.”
“If you look at what happened with cricket the rights went up . . . [by 118 per cent] so unless they test the market they don’t know how monetiseable it is,” he said.
