Industry News Update – May 2nd
AFL
- The latest data collected in the Nielsen Social Content Ratings for the week ending April 30 shows the AFL took the top four spots on the chart with the Anzac day match between Essendon and Collingwood screened by Seven and Fox Footy ranking #1 for sport.
- GOLD Coast have come out on top in the bitter jumper spat with Port Adelaide after the AFL ruled the Suns can wear their home guernsey in China.
- A BUMPER $1.5 billion, six-year pay deal for the AFL’s 817 players was thrashed out over two days of high-powered talks at Crown’s Metropol Hotel. It will see the salary cap climb by 20 per cent this season — from $10.37 million to about $12.4 million — followed by smaller annual increases greater than the 1 per cent tabled two weeks ago.
- Hawthorn has appointed former Olympic cyclist Tracey Gaudry as their new chief executive, where she becomes the AFL’s first female chief executive. Gaudry represented Australia at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games before moving into management and administration, most recently holding the post as general manager of commercial and growth at Athletics Australia (AA). Her other roles included being vice president of world cycling’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and a contributor to the International Olympic Committee on gender inclusion.
- The West Coast Eagles have penned a new two-year partnership with energy company AGL Limited. The firm’s logo will appear on the Eagles’ playing shorts for the 2017 and 2018 AFL campaigns.
A-league
- Football Federation Australia are leading talks to move the Waratahs match against the Blues from Allianz Stadium on Saturday to help preserve the state of the playing surface for Sunday’s A-League grand final.
- A-League clubs should soon be able to start budgeting for next season, with Football Federation Australia to finally provide annual grants from the broadcast deal.
- ADELAIDE United chairman Greg Griffin has revealed the cost of playing in the AFC Champions League has forced his club and Brisbane Roar to consider withdrawing from the tournament. With Adelaide still in the hunt to progress, Griffin said the club may incur losses of more than $200,000 by the time its Group H sixth match is complete on May 9 at Hindmarsh, against China’s Jiangsu Suning.
- A-League leaders Sydney FC are tapping into the wealthy philanthropic sector to shore up its longer-term future. Soccer is a late comer to the Australian Sports Foundation through which Australians contributed a record $32 million to sport in the 2016 financial year. Among the first donors for a program that costs the club about $1 million per season are prominent Sydney funds manager and passionate soccer fan Anton Tagliaferro and former Link Group chief executive Phil Muhlbauer, who played a handful of games in the old National Soccer League.
NRL
- The NRL will allow external Australian data analysts access to the league’s statistics for the first time as part its inaugural NRL DataJam on May 5. Statisticians from companies including Facebook, KPMG, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Qantas and Accenture will gather at Facebook HQ in Sydney to pore through and find correlations and predictive models for the NRL’s data, looking to identify new trends and ways to visualise game play, participation levels, entertainment value and more.
Super Rugby
- Football Federation Australia are leading talks to move the Waratahs match against the Blues from Allianz Stadium on Saturday to help preserve the state of the playing surface for Sunday’s A-League grand final. Until now, owners have been kept in the dark as to what their share of the $56 million-a-year new TV deal with Fox Sports will be, with many clubs claiming difficulty in making financial plans beyond salary-cap expenditure.