‘The world’s changed – Australia needs to keep up’: Foxtel’s Patrick Delany rails against broadcasting law
Foxtel Group CEO Patrick Delany speaks to Mumbrella from the gambling capital of the world, where he reflects on this weekend’s NRL Vegas showcase, the eventual death of advertising gambling, and Australia’s outmoded anti-siphoning rules.
Foxtel’s CEO Patrick Delany has only been in Las Vegas for a few hours when he speaks to Mumbrella, but it’s already evident to him that this year’s rugby league showcase in the glittering city is a lot bigger than last year’s launch.
“I can already tell,” he says. “In the hotel where I’m staying, there seem to be more Australians, more English, walking around. It’ll be interesting to see on the street whether there’s more [NRL] jerseys. If you look at all the billboards and everything in Vegas this year, it seems to be double last year.”
While Delany was en route to the gambling capital of the world, Sportsbet yielded to “stakeholder and community sentiment” and announced it would no longer screen live odds updates during match breaks. Although he admits he isn’t across the finer points of Sportsbet’s declaration, Delaney doubts it will move the needle much for Foxtel Group’s sporting broadcasts.
“During live sport, we don’t have gambling advertising,” he explains. “So I don’t know whether that affects us much.”
TV and radio networks have been fighting a rearguard action to defend the $238.6 million in gambling advertising revenue the ACMA recently calculated they make in each calendar year.
This figure has steadily risen in concert with ballooning sporting rights. The proliferation of betting ads led to a 2023 bipartisan parliamentary enquiry which recommended a total ban on gambling advertising. Twenty months later, the Albanese government continues to drag its feet on the issue.
Last year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeatedly declared sports gambling wasn’t the societal issue it has been made out as, telling ABC Perth in September “sport gambling represents under 5% of the problem gambling issue. Overwhelmingly it’s about poker machines. Then it’s followed by lotteries and lotto tickets and those issues as well.”
As someone heavily invested in the issue, Delany is across all sides of what he says is a nuanced issue.
“Look, I understand the public’s feeling about sports betting, and the government’s [feeling]. It’s a delicate dance between the amount of money that comes from sports betting and goes directly into sports and down into grassroots. There’s a delicate balance, between money that goes into sport – and what Australians, and consequently governments, think.”
Delany says Foxtel Group is “happy to sit back and observe. We understand those two balancing factors.”
Should a total gambling advertising ban be implemented, Delany will be looking to reduce the amount it pays for deals already struck with Cricket Australia and the AFL for extend to 2031 — deals worth a cool $1.5 billion and $4.5 billion respectively.
“This government was in government when we negotiated the contracts,” he says. “[They] knew that sports betting was part of it.” A total ban will see future broadcast deals available for significantly cheaper, but Delany feels “over time, the market will adapt.”
Another matter currently hampering Delany is the anti-siphoning legislation designed to to protect important sporting events from being locked behind paywalls.
The law prevents Foxtel from acquiring exclusive right to sports on the anti-siphoning list, unless a free-to-air broadcaster has a right to televise the event on a broadcasting service.
In essence, Delany argues, such laws unfairly benefit his commercial competitors in Australia.
“They are very, very outdated,” Delany says. “I think Australians get a lot of their entertainment through digital means. I think Australians are very used to paying for sport.
“And frankly, I don’t see why, if the Australian people and the Australian government think we should have some anti-siphoning, why it is contained to broadcast.
“It should be that if you are willing to provide those items that the Australian government, the Australian people think should be free, then I don’t see why you can’t fulfill that obligation by providing it free digitally.”
Delany points to this happening internationally, where major events are routinely broadcast for free digitally. He also refers to June 2024 polling by Resolve Strategic — commissioned by the free-to-air networks — that found 69% of Australians access TV via the internet, while only 29% watch TV exclusively through an aerial.
“The world’s changed,” Delany notes. “I think Australian laws and Australia needs to keep up with that. If people in Canberra think that the world’s only about watching broadcast TV, they need to watch their children watching YouTube and Netflix and TikTok.
“I think, at the very, very least, anti-siphoning should reflect that. And it should be that if something has to be free — and if it’s on the internet or streamed for free — then that qualifies.”
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Delany is delusional. SOME aussies are used to paying for sport. But MANY rely on FTA broadcasters each and every week. What’s a NRL or AFL game rate on average across Total TV?
Delany might understand why people are opposed to intrusive gambling promotion. But he doesn’t care. Nor should the public care if broadcasters make less profit. In fact many if us would be pleased if the whole Murdoch organization was bankrupt (instead of merely lacking in any morality).
All sport should be free to air that includes all ICC Cricket matches, can’t wait for betting commercials to be banned they so annoying. I would just like go on you tube and word without seeing any commercials, when I’m on Google and there’s a news paper article don’t see why I should pay to read it should be like the guardian free.
Don’t worry Delaney, Albanese will make sure he looks after his NRL mates to go along with his streaming rights loophole and $650 mill tax payers dollars to the them in 2024. He won’t want them to get a smaller broadcast deal, so will kick the can down the road another 4 years if re-elected.
I find it funny though that Delaney thinks he can renegotiate the cricket and afl deal, since when can you renege on a contract? surely they knew this was a possibility at the time of signing those deals.
Only one more month and I can banish Binge to the shadow realm.
Max for HBO/WB content and with ESPN hitting Disney+ there’s absolutely no need for it anymore.