Why Thursday night matches may spell the death of Monday Night Football
Date
July 19, 2015 - 8:54PM
Brad Walter
Sports Reporter
Anticipated blockbuster ratings for Thursday night matches at the end of the season are set to intensify Channel Nine's desire to make the concept a weekly event in the next television deal.
The NRL has scheduled matches on Thursday nights for the last four rounds of the premiership in a move that is expected to guarantee ratings success for Nine and may raise doubts about the long-term future of Monday Night Football.
Nine is keen on Thursday night matches as it ensures high ratings for The Footy Show, while Fox Sports will want Monday Night Football to continue for the same reason as it guarantees a strong lead in for Monday Night With Matty Johns.
However, most clubs are opposed to the NRL scheduling matches on both Monday and Thursday nights as it is harder to attract families when kids have to go to school the next day. There are also concerns about the turnaround time between matches and player welfare.
If Monday and Thursday night games feature in the draw for a full season, or most of the season, it is thought that the NRL would want to drop one of the two Friday night matches but Nine is understood to be keen to retain both.
It is believed that Nine would want to continue broadcasting one match live into Sydney and another into Brisbane on its main channel but viewers would be able to watch the alternative game live on a secondary channel, such as Gem.
Should that occur, Nine may have the rights to four matches per week - Thursday night, two games on Friday night and Sunday afternoon.
As a result, rival free-to-air networks Seven and Ten would be likely to miss out, although Fairfax Media reported on Sunday that Seven was interested in wresting a Saturday match from Fox Sports, as well as Thursday night games.
Fairfax Media also reported last week that one of the five matches per week Fox Sports currently broadcasts may pass to Ten, in which it now has a 15 per cent share, subject to ACCC approval. It was suggested that Ten may be interested in a Thursday night match, but would get the last pick of games for each round.
However, it is difficult to imagine Nine boss David Gyngell allowing that to happen given the ratings success of previous Thursday night matches, including the season opening Broncos-Rabbitohs clash which attracted a capital city audience of 729,000 and more than one million viewers nationally.
The NRL has scheduled a return to Thursday night matches in round 23, when North Queensland host Souths. St George Illawarra play Penrith the following Thursday night, with the Rabbitohs and Brisbane to meet again a week later and the Broncos taking on the Storm in round 26, also on Thursday night.
Nine is also reportedly keen to retain some input into scheduling after attracting just 403,000 capital city viewers for the recent Canberra-Newcastle Friday night match.
In comparison, last Friday night's Canterbury-Parramatta and Melbourne-Penrith matches were watched live by 531,000 viewers in Sydney (365,000), Brisbane (126,000), Melbourne (34,000) and Perth (6,000) and a further 299,000 on replay.
Given the drawing power of the Broncos, Nine will undoubtedly want to regularly feature them and teams such as Souths, the Dragons, Bulldogs and Eels on Friday nights but Gyngell is said to be at the same time sympathetic to clubs wanting to play more afternoon matches as he was a former Sydney Roosters director.
The push to have matches played over five days per week is supported by ratings figures, with previous rounds in which games have been played from Thursday to Monday averaging television audiences of 3.12 million compared to 2.587 million viewers for rounds featuring matches over four days, according to the Rugby League Ratings twitter account. But some clubs and media buyers have questioned whether interest would wane if matches were scheduled five days per week for the entire season.
"I'm a mad sports fan but would I want to watch the same sport five nights a week? Probably not," Chris Walton, managing director of Nunn Media told Mumbrella. "There is a risk of splintering the audience. Yes, if there was a game you wanted to watch, then yes it would invariably be on, but I worry this wouldn't work."
However, head of trading at Match Media Theo Zisoglou welcomed the idea.
"In the current TV landscape, the only content working for the free-to-air networks seems to be news, sport and Australian-made reality and drama," Zisoglou said. "So a shift to more live sport would definitely see a positive impact on TV viewing and open up more advertising opportunities."
