Nine Entertainment Tried To Buy Foxtel, Now They Are Locking In Rugby As Sports Battle Unfolds

It’s been revealed that several months ago, Nine Entertainment who are set to sign a multimillion dollar deal with Rugby Australia linked to performance, engaged with bankers over the possibility of buying Foxtel, the deal failed to get off the ground.

According to the Australian Newspaper, which is owned by News Corp, who also control Foxtel, Nine Entertainment was offering $2.4bn.

The streaming network was eventually sold to UK based sports streaming Group Dazn for $3.4bn.

Insiders have told ChannelNews that Nine Management, who recently hired former Foxtel executive Amanda Laing to take control of Nine Entertainment’s challenged broadcast division, knew that the only way for their Stan streaming operation to survive is to invest in Sport.

This has led to the struggling Nine network renegotiating a new agreement based on a five-year broadcast deal worth more than $210 million to air Wallabies, Wallaroos, and Super Rugby matches on both their free to air network and Stan which is facing tough new competition from Foxtel’s future owners Dazn who are a major sports streaming Company in Europe having recently picked up the global rights to the FIFA Clubs World Cup that will be played in the USA this year.

At one stage Nine looked at the concept of buying Optus Sport in an effort to beef up their sports offering ahead of Dazn taking control of Foxtel.

The Australian claims that it’s been no secret that Nine has been open to the prospect of a Foxtel acquisition, a possibility flagged by Data Room in 2023 in a quest to build its sports offering.

Market experts had suggested Stan had hit its peak when it came to its subscription numbers of more than 2.5 million and would struggle to compete with Foxtel in buying sports rights.

This has led to Nine now facing the possibility of have to pay significantly more for the rights to Rugby Australia teams.

The only problem is that the local Rugby series featuring the Waratahs has not rated in the past with the AFR which is owned by Nine Media reporting that ‘The woeful performance of local Super Rugby teams and the Wallabies over the past decade has significantly affected merchandise and ticket sales’

The Wallabies’ failure to reach the knockout stage of the Rugby World Cup for the first time in 2023 and the tumultuous 10-month tenure of coach Eddie Jones put further pressure on the Nine Network who have now moved to a performance based deal.

Nine, snapped up the rugby rights in 2020vfor what they claimed at the time was a $100M deal.

The new deal if Rugby Australia teams deliver could deliver another $30M for the code.

Privately Nine executives admit that Foxtel and their CEO Patrick Delany have read the future right and that sports streaming is the real future for Australian streaming Companies due to the arrival of Warner Max this year and Entertainment competition from Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime.

The AFR claims that Nine’s new Rugby broadcast deal, if finalised, will be separate from the broadcast deals for the 2027 men’s and 2029 women’s World Cups, which the company has also bid to broadcast.

Currently both Foxtel and Nine are set to bid on a new NRL broadcast deal.

The rights are currently split between Nine (which broadcasts matches on free-to-air and 9Now) and Foxtel (which broadcasts matches exclusively on Fox League and Kayo Sports).