Sport on TV: the money game

Free live television cover for most top sports is becoming a fading memory for New Zealanders. LOUISA CLEAVE investigates why.

It's been a mixed summer for sports fans without a Sky subscription.

On the one hand, there were Anna Kournikova and Goran Ivanisevic at Stanley St, Tiger Woods at the New Zealand Golf Open and now the winter Olympics, all available free on TVNZ.

On the other hand, there has been virtually nothing on screen from the biggest sporting talking point of the summer - New Zealand's brief but glorious reign at the top of the one-day cricket series table against Australia and South Africa.

With TV3 showing only a handful of highlights from three games, cricket fans visited friends, went to the pub or fell back on radio commentaries to keep up.

"A lot of people don't have Sky television here so they come down to our pub," says Baedon Toi, barman at the Oak and Black Dog pub, in Kingsland.

"On an average day, we'd normally have about 10 people during the day. With the cricket on, we would expect 50 people. And they do buy over the bar."

Radio Sport and Newstalk ZB manager Bill Francis says demand for the cricket was so great that the Radio Sport commentary - not available in 10 per cent of the country - was played on some ZB frequencies.

He acknowledges the free-to-air factor, but adds that radio and cricket have a long and happy summer relationship anyway.

"We know that we're fulfilling a great need. Whatever you say about television, you're always going to have a strong moving population who are not sitting in front of television sets in the summer.

"They're at the beach or out barbecueing, so radio comes into its own."

As summer moves into winter - at least in sporting terms - similar battles lie ahead. TV3 can promise cricket lovers a better deal for the series against England, which starts tomorrow, but rugby and league fans without Sky are in for another patchy season.

Warriors fans came close to missing seeing any of the team's games on television this year.

Sky wanted to keep the Warriors as its exclusive property, and the Herald was told that the National Rugby League gave its approval.

No deal with a free-to-air broadcaster - in the case of the Warriors, TV3 - for delayed coverage meant more Sky subscriptions could be squeezed out of league fans who would miss out.

The plan is understood to have unravelled when TV3 and Sky discussed the Warriors in the wider context of their rugby and cricket deals.

TV3 will screen delayed cover of Warriors games - and even pay less than last year - but has been set tougher restrictions by Sky.

Among the conditions is that TV3 cannot go to air for at least one hour after kick-off if the game is being played away, and 90 minutes if it is at home.

Similar harsh conditions were placed on TV3 during the recent cricket tri-series.

Sky held the exclusive rights to the series and TV3 had a contract to show highlights from three matches.

The network could not screen highlights until after the match was over, so the two-hour wrap aired late at night.

But TV3's head of sport, John McDonald, says the games were "an add-on" and the channel's big cricket hit is the coming series against England.

TV3 will screen the last three of the five one-day-matches and all three test matches live.

Sky will also broadcast the matches live - on its digital sport channel - but cricket is one sport it can afford to let its free-to-air partner take live.

As well, major sponsor National Bank wants as much television exposure as it can get from NZ Cricket.

Mr McDonald says there would be no chance of Sky letting TV3 screen a rugby match live.

"Sky paid so much money for the deal they did with the Rugby Union that they're very protective of that. Understandably so, they want the value for their money."

Mr McDonald is sympathetic to viewers who feel disgruntled at having to pay to watch live cover of our national sports teams.

But he fully supports the television rights system Rupert Murdoch has used to build his pay television networks around the world.

"The truth is, it's a business like any other business and the guys that hold the rights and run the sporting bodies have to make a buck, either to pay their players or to maintain their sport," says Mr McDonald.

"They do that through television, and pay television is the way of the world."

In 1995 New Zealand rugby sold TV rights to its big games to Sky in a 10-year deal which expires in 2005.

Three years later, Sky signed a five-year contract, with the option for another five years, with NZ Cricket for exclusive coverage of the national team's domestic games.

The rugby and cricket bodies maintain that they would not be able to remain in the game without selling the broadcast rights to their sport.

The NZRFU's television contract with Sky is slightly more lucrative than its sponsorship deals, accounting for about 34 per cent of the union's income.

The contracts have a few years left in them, but work has started on reclaiming some of the country's major sporting events when the contracts come up for renewal.

In the meantime, Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton is persisting with his pet project of getting some big live events back on free-to-air TV.

He has been talking with the rugby union, trying to come up with a solution to wrestle back cover of significant events such as the Bledisloe Cup.

Mr Anderton warns that the clock cannot be turned back and sports fans should not expect a sudden return of live All Black test matches to free-to-air TV.

Britain and Australia have drawn up lists of special sports events which must be shown free.

But the Alliance leader says he will not be responsible for shutting down vital financial lifelines by drawing up a list of protected events, passing it into law and presenting it to the various sports bodies.

"You can't do it by force. It used to be done by convention and culture but those days are over.

"We can't say we don't care about the real world and go around breaking contracts."

Mr Anderton wants to ensure there is no "shortfall" in sport income as a result of giving New Zealanders the chance to watch their heroes playing without paying.

He suggested that the Government could make up the difference between the price the sporting body would have received from the highest bidder and what it received by selling at a discounted price to allow free-to-air cover.

"The Government can't say we want this on behalf of all the people of New Zealand but we don't want to pay for it either," says Mr Anderton.

"There are all different kinds of methods for doing this.

"But in the end someone has to make up the shortfall from what was being paid by the private company that owns the game and wants to display them exclusively for fees paid, versus the money that has to be made up if those rights for those particular games are not made available."

Mr McDonald would like to see a clause in contracts signed with pay television requiring a free-to-air partner.

Doing so would avoid a situation like Sky keeping the Warriors all to itself to boost its subscription base.

He supports a voluntary quota system for free-to-air sport which would be enforced by the sports organisations selling their rights.

Mr McDonald does not believe the Government should intervene in sports broadcasting rights.

In Britain and Australia, anti-siphoning laws ban pay TV companies from buying the exclusive rights to sports events deemed of national importance.

Australia's list of events which should be freely available to the public covers 11 codes, from horse racing to motor sports.

Britain's listed events are broken down into two categories, and include the FA Cup final, the Wimbledon tennis tournament, cricket tests played in England and the Grand National horse race.

The legislation has worked to stop pilfering by pay television and keep important events accessible to all Australian and British TV viewers.

But the rules have been stretched and tested in both countries.

Australia had to reform its rules to stop free-to-air broadcasters "hoarding" popular events they had obtained rights to but had no intention of screening.

Amendments to the law prevented a network buying the rights to an event, say a cricket series, and then deciding to screen only certain matches.

The Government directed networks which had no intention of screening a "substantial portion" of an event or tournament to give away the unused rights to the publicly owned ABC or SBS channels.

In Britain, there have been calls to overhaul and tighten rules governing sport on television so more big sporting occasions are seen free-to-air.

Unsurprisingly, the threat of losing the World Cup football tournament from free-to-air television this year erupted into huge debate in Britain last year.

German media company Kirch tried to dodge the British Government's sport protection legislation by claiming it had bought rights to the World Cup before the 1996 law was in place, and could therefore sell to the highest bidder - pay television.

Kirch was asking huge sums for the World Cup rights but the main broadcasters, BBC and ITV, were willing to pay tens of millions more pounds than they had for the previous tournament.

When the British Government finally waded in to the debate, Kirch backed down, realising it could not afford to abandon a rights contract with the UK, and signed with the BBC and ITV.

They still paid £160m ($516 million) for the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, but it was a better deal than the $548 million Kirch wanted for this year alone.