By Mark Baber
August 7 – Football Federation Australia (FFA) has appointed World Sport Group (WSG) to represent the worldwide (excluding Australia and Oceania) broadcast rights for the Australian senior men’s national team matches and the Hyundai A-League, for a further four years, until the end of the 2016/2017 season.
The new deal extends a relationship going back to 2005 and FFA CEO David Gallop (pictured) said: “FFA is pleased to continue its relationship with WSG to sell the international broadcast rights of the Hyundai A-League and senior men’s national team matches. We have had a long and fruitful history working with WSG and we look forward to continuing this relationship and developing further broadcast opportunities internationally for the promotion and visibility of Australian football.”
James Clarke, Senior Vice President, Content at World Sport Group said: “We are pleased to extend our partnership with Football Federation Australia for a further four years. The Hyundai A-League is one of Asia’s leading leagues and together with FFA, we have been able to build a strong broadcast platform for the competition across Asia and around the world over the past few years.”
Matches from the Hyundai A-League’s 2012/2013 season were televised by Mediaset Premium Calcio in Italy, BSkyB in the United Kingdom, Fox Sports and One World Sports in the USA, TV Asahi and NHK in Japan, i-Cable in Hong Kong, Astro in Malaysia, Starhub in Singapore and Guangdong TV in China and new deals have been agreed for the coming season with Mediaset who will be showing all Sydney FC games in Italy and BT Vision who will be showing at least two matches a week in the UK.
Clarke said: “In the new cycle we’re looking to extend the platform further to more broadcasters in Asia, where Australian football is increasingly important, and also to broadcasters in English-speaking countries which have an affinity with Australia. We are also looking to grow the league’s distribution in southern and eastern Europe; regions with large migrant and expatriate populations in Australia.”
Working with Perform, all Hyundai A-League games will be broadcast on www.aleague.livesport.tv.
“The Hyundai A-League is a hugely popular asset internationally not only for expat Australians, whose emails we receive on a weekly basis, but also new fans turning their attention to the league,” said Gallop.
“Last year’s arrival of Alessandro Del Piero, Shinji Ono and Emile Heskey has already seen the visibility of our game grow at an international level – with this new agreement in place the Hyundai A-League now has a potential audience in the tens of millions internationally.”
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