From Monday 7Plus has AFL rights to screen the Brownlow Medal and, importantly, the 2024 AFL Grand Final on September 28.
Cricket rights for 7Plus will follow.
But as other platforms have discovered during FIFA World Cups, or even Game of Thrones, mega-traffic have led to crashing.
Renee Quirk, Seven Commercial Director, Sport, speaking last week at the Australian Content in the Streaming Era Symposium at ACMI, said Seven was determined to get it right.
“Getting the AFL and Cricket on board is is an enormous project. I walk past the digital teams trying to buy new Sport, and they have seriously got my face on a dartboard because they don’t want to hear about it. We’re really throwing everything at what we know will be a huge spike in audience.
“Technically, it’s an enormous project for Seven and one that we know we can’t afford to get wrong. So we have had big spikes, the Matildas were a great example -in the modern era, the highest streamed event, and very proudly, not a glitch.”
7Plus already has experience with huge audiences through the FIFA Women’s World Cup and 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
“It is top of mind. I can assure you, a lot of money is being thrown at it, and we feel quietly confident,” she added.
There are other quirks in the AFL streaming rights which require state geo-blocking in 2025.
“For the AFL Channel Seven has rights to show three and a half network games a week, but we also have the rights to show all of the local home state matches. So if you’re in Sydney, you can watch the Swans or GWS every week,” she continued.
“That means that Swans game, which can only be shown in New South Wales, needs to be geo-blocked just to New South Wales. Geo-blocking to Australia is relatively easy thing to do for the whole country. We’re used to that. But geo-blocking to that state is technically extremely challenging.
“It’s really challenging. Every resource has been thrown out. We are using experts throughout the world to help us find out what is best practice. How are we IP targeting? How are we dealing with mobile devices that travel from state to state? How do you deal with regional, borderline, state to state boundaries?” she asked.
“It’s a very huge piece of technology, which I’m very proud to say we’re really working hard on, and we’ll be ready to go, come next season.”
Photo: Bryan Tang.
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