Getting a ticket to the world party: televising soccer in Australia

Abstract

Australia currently has the world’s most restrictive legislation designed to protect sports content of national and cultural significance from subscription television exclusivity. Despite this powerful ‘anti‐siphoning’ regime, association football (soccer) has been systematically removed from Australian free‐to‐air television screens through a combination of regulatory neglect and influence peddling; a lingering ethnocentric disdain for the sport; an increasingly under‐funded public broadcasting sector, and the encroachment of a global media conglomerate promoting an internationally ascendant model of ‘user‐pays’ audience aggregation. In addressing the position of televised soccer in Australia, this article analyses the country’s peculiar ensemble of social, cultural, political and economic influences that is retarding the long‐term development of the sport within a highly competitive national ‘landscape’. We argue that, for it to become a full player in the ‘world game’ and even in its ‘own backyard’, soccer in Australia requires proper representation within the still powerful sphere of free‐to‐air television.