IT is, says Alex Wilkinson, “music to my ears”, and the Sydney FC captain could well be speaking for most Australian players about the latest piece of broadcast investment in football.
The deal announced on Tuesday to show Matildas, Socceroos and FFA Cup games on the 10 Network and its new streaming service, Paramount Plus, effectively creates a home for football on TV, coming on the back of a $200m, five-year agreement to show every A-League and W-League game from next season.
For the fans it means just one service to sign up for; for the players, it is another sign of corporate confidence in the game that translates into a showcase for Australia’s brand of football. After the pandemic-induced uncertainty of the past 15 months, both the Australian Professional Leagues and Football Australia can show there is belief in the future.
“To have a commercial free-to-air network like 10 buy into the game and the vision for the game is a great sign,” said Wilkinson, speaking in a personal capacity but who has served as president of the players’ association for years.
“Them basically getting the rights to everything outside of a World Cup – the A-League, W-League, the FFA Cup and all the internationals – creates a huge wave of content for the fans, and at the end of the day that’s what we want to do.
“From the players’ point of view, it’s really nice to have some stability around the future, and gives us such certainty over the next four to five years. The last 12 months has been challenging for us, just as it has for so many people, but now there’s a real sense that football is going places.”
In fact the players will be front and centre in the new deal, key to plans for promotion of the league across channels and formats in a way that arguably has been missing before.
“You get the sense that 10 want to promote the game, to advertise it and champion it,” said Wilkinson. “They will reap the benefits of that and so can we.
“I have no doubt they will push the game as hard as they can, as they have with things like the Big Bash in the past – to the extent I read that they want to make football the No 1 sport in the country.
“That sense of ambition and belief is music to my ears. We’ve always seen it as the world game, we’re part of a global sport, and now we have the chance to invest in it like it deserves.”
