‘We’ve got to be mindful of new generations’: Kayo Sports launches national commentator search for AFL 2025 season
Attention: aspiring podcasters, lounge-room commentators, regional sporting broadcasters, and anyone else who has secretly thought, “I could do that” when listening to the footy commentary – now is your chance.
Kayo Sports has launched the Kayo Call Up, a talent competition where one footy fan will be given a paid on-air role during Fox Footy’s Super Saturday LIVE coverage in 2025.
The selectors are not looking for anything specific, so the final pick may be a gun commentator, a boundary rider, TV host, talent interviewer, expert analyst, or maybe a touch of comic relief.
“Essentially, it’s really coming out to all footy fans,” Julian Ogrin, CEO of Kayo Sports, tells Mumbrella. “It’s people that have a budding career in media, they may be a good regional caller of the game, or they might have their own individual calling gig providing to the niche audiences, that want to get into the big leagues.”
Ogrin likens it to The Apprentice, in its approach and stresses that it’s a good learning opportunity for the winner.
“Essentially, what happens is in the first eight rounds of Super Saturday, they’ll join our first-class commentary team on Fox Sports and become a key member in the calling of Super Saturday,” he said.
The specifics of the role will depend on who is chosen.
“It could be on the ground, it could be in the box, it could be both, but it’s more like really just getting the learnings of mainstream sports commentary, particularly with footy,” Ogrin explains.
“It’s an exciting opportunity. We’re always on the lookout for AFL greats like Leigh Matthews, but we thought this would be a great opportunity to tap in and see who else is out there – the next big thing.”
Fox Footy general manager Mick Neill explains to Mumbrella that the 2025 season, in which Fox Footy and Kayo have the exclusive live broadcast rights for Saturday matches for the first eight rounds, is the result of years of behind-the-scenes work.
Fox Footy will have exclusive live rights to Saturday games
“There was a lot of people who put all the time and effort into securing the best rights we could get for Foxtel and for Kayo,” Neill says.
“And we’re just stoked with the outcome. We think we can provide fans with a really great experience on Saturdays. And it’ll be the place to be. It’s got to be a big focus of what we do this year. And it’ll be bigger and better and longer and more exciting than ever.”
This high-pressure environment is what the new member of the team will be entering into.
“We’ve got a really great line-up of really professional broadcasters,” Neill continues. “Both callers and expert commentators and hosts and boundary riders. We’ve got a fantastic team. So to build that out to allow us to call all nine games every week has been a fantastic exercise.
“We’ve been really busy for the last year or so just trying to put all the pieces together, so that we can cover all the Thursday night and Friday night games as well as all of what Super Saturday and Sunday will bring.”
The winner of the Kayo Call Up will be the latest in a round of signings for Fox Footy. Shaun Burgoyne and Tom Hawkins joined the team recently, while this week it was announced that Leigh Matthews will join the Fox Footy family to provide expert opinion, while Garry Lyon will join Gerard Whateley as co-host of Fox Footy’s AFL 360.”
Ogrin is expecting a high quality of entrant, given the barrier to entry for broadcasting have been removed by technology.
“I think what social media has done and podcasts, it’s given everyone the opportunity to get in front of a microphone,” he says.
“I think if you’ve got the gift of the gab, you’re seeing a lot of entrepreneurs out there just having a crack. So I think the addressable market has exploded with the launch of social media and we’re tapping into that.”
Ogrin says rather than being “just a bit of fun” or simply a good marketing opportunity ahead of the blockbuster 2025 season, it’s also a way for Fox Footy to bolster their team with a different style of talent.
“We’ve got to evolve as well,” he says. “We’ve got to be mindful of new generations, getting into the younger demographic. They might think the way they communicate is different to the last 20 years of some of our mature callers, so it’s not necessarily saying we want to change the game – it’s also about learning from them as well, as much as we’re teaching them.”
Entries are open now and close on December 11. Entry details are here.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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