Tiger Woods to lead Nine’s sports charge
Nine has signalled that live sport is going to be a major focus for maintaining audiences, with the capture of November’s Australian Masters golf featuring Tiger Woods.
Nine Network boss Jeffrey Browne told Mumbrella: “We are investing in big international events such as the golf, the cricket, the Rugby World Cup and the Vancouver Winter Olympics and 2012 Olympics.”
As well as live sport being a way to beat ad skipping, Browne said that the broadcast rights have an in-built business model because event sponsors often become on air sponsors. He said: “When a naming sponsor is announced for the Masters we’ll be talking to them about a broadcast package.”
He added: “Tiger Woods will drive a lot of interest from the audience. He is on fire at the moment.”
What a coup for the Australian Masters, it’s about time a decent station got the rights to broadcast this event. For far too long had it been ignored by the previous broadcaster!
Good luck Channel Nine, I look forward to watching Tiger tame Melbourne’s sandbelt!
Is this the same Channel Nine that shows its contempt for the golfing public by holding the rights to the British Open and then not showing any of it live?
Yes, ad skipping is such a serious problem for Nine….
The Olympics should have Rugby and cricket in the Olympics yet the Olympic Organization only take rich sport organizations like golf and basketball.
Well, golf is long overdue for the Olympics. What’s disappointing is that the participants will, as happened with tennis and others be the professional players. I know that the Olympics stopped being a wholly amateur competiton some while back, but the sad thing is that golf has such a strong amatuer network. Every state/country has its own amatuer champion, as does virtually every country and of course there is a world amatuer champion as well.
I was always hoping that when golf eventually became an Olympic sport, the players would be the amateur champions (plus other qualifiers) from every country and that the pros would stay away. It would be such an incentive for good amateurs to see a spot in the Olympics as a goal.