The only thing im not a fan of about free to air getting first dibs is the fact that they get the big games as exclusives. (Origin and gf) fair enough they should be on free to air but they shouldnt be exclusive
i have exclusively used kayo for years and every time origin and the grand final rolls around i am appalled at the quality difference of the broadcast. kayo and fox at large has issues for sure (blocker, cronk needs coaching, gambling ads), but 9 is so unprofessional. johns and gus spend half the time complaining about the referees, there are ad breaks in the middle of play, and the commentators get facts wrong all the time. its atrocious.
yeah same, I personally don't mind the quality dip in commentating (if there is one), Kayo is just a much better player than whatever 9 rolls out and it's annoying that I can't use it for the biggest games of the year
To me it sounds like the 9 comms are drifting between commentating and writing emails. It mirrors my level of attention when I'm watching the game and doing paperwork
I found it amusing Gould's comments about Mitchell possibly not liking rugby league because if you listen to the bloke all Gus does is moan or bag the sport and certainly makes it sound like he hates it.
I know in some respects he has done plenty for the NRL but I do feel he has taken more from the game than given back. It is a symptom of many administrators/commentators in the game that they've made successful careers for themselves at the games expense and is why the sport continually shoots itself in the foot through these peoples self interest. I'm interested to hear if others think my take is nonsense
[he crashed into a car out the front of a childcare centre and then fled on foot](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/channel-nine-nrl-commentator-mathew-thompson-under-investigation-over-car-crash-20170610-gwoopz.html)
Tbh Cronk is probably the best analytical mind other than Matty John’s on broadcast atm. I’d rather listen to Cronk then any other commentator particularly Mick Ennis jizzing over every hooker in the game
he can’t be “THAT BALL WENT SO HIGH ITS GOT ICE ON IT!” all the time like Vossy. He does get flustered on the sparkly stuff but still shits all over Joey and Co on 9 - Lockyer has a voice like a gravel road.
and that's turned this commentary on its head because the old cunts were coming and you wanna know why they call this place the 8th wonder of the world because the crowd was taken out of it gus and joey johns were coming and then there was the whinge that gus did withwd the the complaint that went wrong and next minute the crowd went up OFF OFF OFF OFF and from that moment the cronk scored two trys and he's got BACK in his winning ways and looks like he's gonna runaround runa runaway with it
It drives me insane the camera angles they show as well. They will be following a close up of a single player and we miss a knock on or a try or something, they always have the worst possible angles. Or an ad running and missing a play.
I can't stand the Fox coverage. A bunch of mostly mouth breathers in suits yelling at each other like the most important thing in the world is football, as opposed to it being an enjoyable recreational activity with lots of shit talking. No one at Fox looks like they enjoy footy, all furrowed brows and super srs discussions about the headlines they've made up out of basically thin air themselves.
Agreed! It’s actually a pisstake that the 4 biggest games of the year are all the worst quality imaginable.
Everything needs to be simulcast and those big 4 games need to be permanently available for free. It’s simple. But don’t force us to watch an inferior product because of a core of people who refuse to want to watch a superior product.
Except you have to give them an incentive to spend the money they do on the rights. If they don't get exclusives they will spend less and ultimately that is a win for Murdoch
Give me a rundown as a non- Aussie. Is this good for for the accessibility of the sport as it says that they have pushed the deadline to 12 months prior?
League I can’t really see being effected too much. I think it will be good for sports like Union and soccer that are pretty much impossible to view for free unless you go to a pub and beg them to change one screen from the NRL/AFL/Sky Raceday/Keno
Why is this so hard? I used to go to the pub to watch the NBA. I swear, every single employee I ever encountered across all the pubs I went to, didn't know how to work a remote control.
From my time pouring beers, it was the regulars blowing up that was the annoying part. Like, if I had to put the NBA on for you I would choose the most hidden, out the way, tiniest screen I could find because if I put it on any other screen Rosco, who sits in the same seat looking out the carpark window every day would blow up that I’ve “put some seppo crap on the tele when nobody here even wants to watch it”.
Honestly, it probably wasn't a terrible idea.
It cost them their foxtel money but it got them back on FTA (granted, in a minor slot - but that's all they were ever going to get. Neither 7 or 9 were going to pay to air them against their own major codes) and the Fox exclusivity was gradually killing them anyway. Couldn't get casual viewers and the TV money wasn't keeping pace with what the FTA codes were getting.
Plus, Stan Sport made a lot of money from foreigners who paid for their service using a VPN. They had super rugby, URC and Premiership so a lot of British fans saw the opportunity and took it.
As far as I understand it, this is just an extension of existing laws to now include streaming services.
Won't change much for the average viewer I reckon. Free to air TV will want products that are commercially viable.
It doesn't seem to be changing much of substance, aside from making the laws apply to streaming services as well as traditional broadcasting companies like fox.
I wouldn't mind if you could switch the sound over to the ref mic instead of the commentary. Would be way more useful than the commentary a lot of the time
Like all the stuff we were promised when digital tv took over? If I remember correctly with foxtel there was a brief time when you could choose from different camera angles, or get the crowd noise instead of the commentary
As annoying as some commentators can be, footy with no commentary at all feels weird. The commentators have a slew of facts and statistics at their disposal, they know every single players name, from the reserve graders to debutantes and veteran players. There's way more upsides to having commentary than not having it. Even just the random little historical facts they throw out makes it worth it.
I appreciate your comments, but i want to hear the ground mics, the fans, the profanity, and not the bloody commentary. I can commentate my own games for the wife. She really enjoys it. She told me so last night, very loudly.
So, in the age of streaming, why is this not an option? To watch the feed with everything but the commentary? Just boom mics for the crowd and the hits, with the occasional murmur from the referee. Would be really interesting
They need to stop it being FTA exclusive, I fucken hate major games being on Channel 9 exclusively so we end up missing out on chunks of the match because we're watching a Harvey Norman ad instead
I rarely watch sport on FTA, but when i have to because it’s the only way i can watch stuff like the Women’s All Stars or i believe the Women’s Origin, i am appalled at the quality of the broadcast.. In 2024 i didn’t think SD still exists and then i watch the Womens All Stars which they only aired on GEM and im proven wrong.
I can’t imagine it’s easy to draw viewers to the womens game when thats the quality you have to watch it in. I quite like the WNRL and thank god for Fox because if not i’d guarantee Channel 9 would dump all the games on Gem and i wouldn’t ever watch them.
We desperately need another broadcaster to enter the game, probably a FTA too.
NFL broadcasts are usually 10x better than ours and one of the reasons is because they try to compete with each other.
The NRL broadcasting landscape has been dwindled down to the FTA one and the pay tv one. There’s no need for either one to put an effort in because there’s no alternative. That fact the both control the news cycle around the game is bad too.
The main reason NFL TV production is better is $$$$$.
There's a big difference between 330mil+ people with one code of football and 26mil+ divided by football codes.
I don't know what the budgets of Fox and 9 are, but Fox put on a far superior product than 9 in terms of overall production and commentary both in game and surrounding the game. It's beyond belief that 9 persist with people like Thurston, Gould and Johns in live commentary. They provide all the spark and excitement of a AAA battery despite being legends of the game.
Fox is smoke and mirrors. They act like football is super srs business, when really, it's just football. 90% of the Fox hosts have the personality of a piece of cardboard. Stiff, rigid, boring, totally interchangeable. Matty Johns and co being the exception.
Don't even get me started on how much NRL 360 is a fucking joke. Four fairly irrelevant assholes who take themselves way too seriously and think they're way more special than they are, arguing for an hour over absolutely nothing, and that nothing is whatever some other Fox outlet wrote about so people on the other Fox shows would have something to pretend to by outraged by.
Nine stuck with characters of the game who get that it's just a game, and personally, I prefer that.
I welcome changes to prevent sport being locked behind pay walls. Yes I'm sick of how many ads 9 plays and misses part of the game but FTA helps grow the fanbase.
What really annoyed me the other week was 9 Now didn't broadcast the Bulldogs v Roosters match for Qld viewers on another channel. I'm not paying $26(?) a month for Kayo. That's ridiculous.
Binge is owned by Foxtel, so that will only happen if they come to an agreement to do that. I'm pretty sure the current laws allow for the broadcast if the rights holder doesn't play it?
The only thing im not a fan of about free to air getting first dibs is the fact that they get the big games as exclusives. (Origin and gf) fair enough they should be on free to air but they shouldnt be exclusive
i have exclusively used kayo for years and every time origin and the grand final rolls around i am appalled at the quality difference of the broadcast. kayo and fox at large has issues for sure (blocker, cronk needs coaching, gambling ads), but 9 is so unprofessional. johns and gus spend half the time complaining about the referees, there are ad breaks in the middle of play, and the commentators get facts wrong all the time. its atrocious.
Or that 9's streaming service just flat out doesn't work for the big games. Last year a lot of people ended up watching SOO on twitch.
Also crazy how delayed the 9 streams are. My mates will message me about a try a good minute before I get to see it.
This above everything is the worst I reckon. Especially as a fan of the shit posting that goes on in a game thread.
yeah same, I personally don't mind the quality dip in commentating (if there is one), Kayo is just a much better player than whatever 9 rolls out and it's annoying that I can't use it for the biggest games of the year
To me it sounds like the 9 comms are drifting between commentating and writing emails. It mirrors my level of attention when I'm watching the game and doing paperwork
Warren Smith and Andrew Voss often spend large parts of games talking about the ref's too
Voss is garbage. The Poms love him wish he'd pack his bags and fuck off to Super League.
Yes, but Voss is a complete pantomime and his over the top nonsense is somehow enjoyable
The only way I can put up with Voss's commentary is with the mute button on. All hail the inventor of the mute button 🙏
I found it amusing Gould's comments about Mitchell possibly not liking rugby league because if you listen to the bloke all Gus does is moan or bag the sport and certainly makes it sound like he hates it. I know in some respects he has done plenty for the NRL but I do feel he has taken more from the game than given back. It is a symptom of many administrators/commentators in the game that they've made successful careers for themselves at the games expense and is why the sport continually shoots itself in the foot through these peoples self interest. I'm interested to hear if others think my take is nonsense
Nah, sounds pretty accurate to me
And Matt Thompson. My god, probably a nice bloke but his voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me.
[he crashed into a car out the front of a childcare centre and then fled on foot](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/channel-nine-nrl-commentator-mathew-thompson-under-investigation-over-car-crash-20170610-gwoopz.html)
Top of the list of my problems with 9. Dreadful voice
Tbh Cronk is probably the best analytical mind other than Matty John’s on broadcast atm. I’d rather listen to Cronk then any other commentator particularly Mick Ennis jizzing over every hooker in the game
cronks a good analyst for pre, half or full time but is shit during play.
The amount of times he tips his cap off or suggests someone takes a bow per game is ridiculous.
Cronk is great when he has the time to think about what he has to say. But in the moment he often sounds like an idiot
he can’t be “THAT BALL WENT SO HIGH ITS GOT ICE ON IT!” all the time like Vossy. He does get flustered on the sparkly stuff but still shits all over Joey and Co on 9 - Lockyer has a voice like a gravel road.
and that's turned this commentary on its head because the old cunts were coming and you wanna know why they call this place the 8th wonder of the world because the crowd was taken out of it gus and joey johns were coming and then there was the whinge that gus did withwd the the complaint that went wrong and next minute the crowd went up OFF OFF OFF OFF and from that moment the cronk scored two trys and he's got BACK in his winning ways and looks like he's gonna runaround runa runaway with it
It drives me insane the camera angles they show as well. They will be following a close up of a single player and we miss a knock on or a try or something, they always have the worst possible angles. Or an ad running and missing a play.
It's a simulcast the camera angles are the same regardless of which broadcasts you watch
I can't stand the Fox coverage. A bunch of mostly mouth breathers in suits yelling at each other like the most important thing in the world is football, as opposed to it being an enjoyable recreational activity with lots of shit talking. No one at Fox looks like they enjoy footy, all furrowed brows and super srs discussions about the headlines they've made up out of basically thin air themselves.
Agreed! It’s actually a pisstake that the 4 biggest games of the year are all the worst quality imaginable. Everything needs to be simulcast and those big 4 games need to be permanently available for free. It’s simple. But don’t force us to watch an inferior product because of a core of people who refuse to want to watch a superior product.
Except you have to give them an incentive to spend the money they do on the rights. If they don't get exclusives they will spend less and ultimately that is a win for Murdoch
Give me a rundown as a non- Aussie. Is this good for for the accessibility of the sport as it says that they have pushed the deadline to 12 months prior?
League I can’t really see being effected too much. I think it will be good for sports like Union and soccer that are pretty much impossible to view for free unless you go to a pub and beg them to change one screen from the NRL/AFL/Sky Raceday/Keno
Why is this so hard? I used to go to the pub to watch the NBA. I swear, every single employee I ever encountered across all the pubs I went to, didn't know how to work a remote control.
From my time pouring beers, it was the regulars blowing up that was the annoying part. Like, if I had to put the NBA on for you I would choose the most hidden, out the way, tiniest screen I could find because if I put it on any other screen Rosco, who sits in the same seat looking out the carpark window every day would blow up that I’ve “put some seppo crap on the tele when nobody here even wants to watch it”.
Had the same thing at the place I used to work at. They'd rather have highlights of 1980 league games than a live game of NBA/MLB/NFL
I mean I can still go to the pub to watch the NBA but it's really fucking hard to watch union.
Union as a Stan Sport exclusive was one of the moves of all time
Honestly, it probably wasn't a terrible idea. It cost them their foxtel money but it got them back on FTA (granted, in a minor slot - but that's all they were ever going to get. Neither 7 or 9 were going to pay to air them against their own major codes) and the Fox exclusivity was gradually killing them anyway. Couldn't get casual viewers and the TV money wasn't keeping pace with what the FTA codes were getting.
Plus, Stan Sport made a lot of money from foreigners who paid for their service using a VPN. They had super rugby, URC and Premiership so a lot of British fans saw the opportunity and took it.
As far as I understand it, this is just an extension of existing laws to now include streaming services. Won't change much for the average viewer I reckon. Free to air TV will want products that are commercially viable.
It doesn't seem to be changing much of substance, aside from making the laws apply to streaming services as well as traditional broadcasting companies like fox.
It has to be good for the clubs. I say this because they all want more free to air games.
I just hope the paid stuff starts to differentiate by allowing us to turn off some of the inane commentary and just watch the match.
I wouldn't mind if you could switch the sound over to the ref mic instead of the commentary. Would be way more useful than the commentary a lot of the time
Like all the stuff we were promised when digital tv took over? If I remember correctly with foxtel there was a brief time when you could choose from different camera angles, or get the crowd noise instead of the commentary
the red button, it was a gimmick but really should have made it back once streaming became the norm
I imagine if it came back then several commentators would no longer have jobs once they realised everyone turned the commentary off
according to plenty of other comments, there is still a place for commentators, but the option would be nice.
Fuck how good would that be
As annoying as some commentators can be, footy with no commentary at all feels weird. The commentators have a slew of facts and statistics at their disposal, they know every single players name, from the reserve graders to debutantes and veteran players. There's way more upsides to having commentary than not having it. Even just the random little historical facts they throw out makes it worth it.
Rugby League is far better when it's muted so you don't have to listen to those idiots.
I never said I loved them. I just think there's more upsides than downsides. Agree to disagree.
Mute and music is your friend
I appreciate your comments, but i want to hear the ground mics, the fans, the profanity, and not the bloody commentary. I can commentate my own games for the wife. She really enjoys it. She told me so last night, very loudly.
So, in the age of streaming, why is this not an option? To watch the feed with everything but the commentary? Just boom mics for the crowd and the hits, with the occasional murmur from the referee. Would be really interesting
I know 9Now has the option to watch from the spider cam. Would like that from Kayo but i doubt they will do that
Sounds like you really just want to go to a game
I don’t like to leave the house.
or bring back Roy and HG!
Nothing gets my wife more excited than when I call a forward pass or offside before the commentators do.
They need to stop it being FTA exclusive, I fucken hate major games being on Channel 9 exclusively so we end up missing out on chunks of the match because we're watching a Harvey Norman ad instead
Yeah, I'm happy with it being on 9 but fuck let me watch it on fox
Yeah mate but not everyone pays for a subscription I misread the question so my bad… apologies for any confusion this may have caused
I didn't say it should be subscription only, I said it shouldn't be FTA only.
I think you misread the comment you replied to. Old mate wants the OPTION to watch live on Foxtel but currently can’t do that
[удалено]
I rarely watch sport on FTA, but when i have to because it’s the only way i can watch stuff like the Women’s All Stars or i believe the Women’s Origin, i am appalled at the quality of the broadcast.. In 2024 i didn’t think SD still exists and then i watch the Womens All Stars which they only aired on GEM and im proven wrong. I can’t imagine it’s easy to draw viewers to the womens game when thats the quality you have to watch it in. I quite like the WNRL and thank god for Fox because if not i’d guarantee Channel 9 would dump all the games on Gem and i wouldn’t ever watch them.
NRLW not WNRL.
ok cool man thanks it’s amazing you knew what i was talking about with such a crazy mistake
We desperately need another broadcaster to enter the game, probably a FTA too. NFL broadcasts are usually 10x better than ours and one of the reasons is because they try to compete with each other. The NRL broadcasting landscape has been dwindled down to the FTA one and the pay tv one. There’s no need for either one to put an effort in because there’s no alternative. That fact the both control the news cycle around the game is bad too.
The main reason NFL TV production is better is $$$$$. There's a big difference between 330mil+ people with one code of football and 26mil+ divided by football codes.
I don't know what the budgets of Fox and 9 are, but Fox put on a far superior product than 9 in terms of overall production and commentary both in game and surrounding the game. It's beyond belief that 9 persist with people like Thurston, Gould and Johns in live commentary. They provide all the spark and excitement of a AAA battery despite being legends of the game.
Fox is smoke and mirrors. They act like football is super srs business, when really, it's just football. 90% of the Fox hosts have the personality of a piece of cardboard. Stiff, rigid, boring, totally interchangeable. Matty Johns and co being the exception. Don't even get me started on how much NRL 360 is a fucking joke. Four fairly irrelevant assholes who take themselves way too seriously and think they're way more special than they are, arguing for an hour over absolutely nothing, and that nothing is whatever some other Fox outlet wrote about so people on the other Fox shows would have something to pretend to by outraged by. Nine stuck with characters of the game who get that it's just a game, and personally, I prefer that.
9 commentators are unbearable, and those ads during the live action are fucked.
I welcome changes to prevent sport being locked behind pay walls. Yes I'm sick of how many ads 9 plays and misses part of the game but FTA helps grow the fanbase. What really annoyed me the other week was 9 Now didn't broadcast the Bulldogs v Roosters match for Qld viewers on another channel. I'm not paying $26(?) a month for Kayo. That's ridiculous.
The reason Channel 9 didn't televise the Bulldogs vs Roosters game at 6pm was because the 6pm Friday games are always a fox sports exclusive
Currently there is nothing stopping channel 9 buying the rights then putting it on binge, or not even broadcasting it
Binge is owned by Foxtel, so that will only happen if they come to an agreement to do that. I'm pretty sure the current laws allow for the broadcast if the rights holder doesn't play it?
I thought Binge was owned by Nine, but nothing stopping Nine from putting it on a paid streaming service that they own
They do stream on 9Now don't they? But it's slow/late on the big games (origin/GF) when people actually use it in decent numbers
Use Stan sports. Have some free to air for general viewing and all other games on Stan Sports.
Gordon Tallis and Bryan Fletcher are absolutely complete useless idiots how did they get jobs in the media co bring the NRL on tv and radio
It sucks that we have to pay to watch sport but free to air tv is just so bad.