“Insider Voice” offers expert perspectives from our team on key trends and challenges in media and advertising. Through this series, you’ll gain actionable insights and forward-thinking predictions on topics ranging from AdTech advancements to the impact of emerging technologies on audience engagement and revenue models.
Nine’s CEO, Mike Sneesby announced a 305 million AUD deal securing exclusive rights to broadcast three Summer Olympic Games in Australia: Paris 2024, Los Angeles 2028, and Brisbane 2032. He also highlighted that the company has already generated 140 million AUD in advertising and subscription revenue from the Paris Games alone, indicating that the substantial investment is well on its way to delivering a strong return.
For most media companies in Australia with streaming and video portfolios, sports is a key driver of growth. Given that Brisbane 2032 will be a nationwide phenomenon, we can expect all major media companies and advertisers to capitalise on the event.
There are many different opportunities for media companies to profit from sports content and create revenue growth, especially as more viewers embrace live streaming sports and digital interactive sports. Testing a variety of different revenue options for how they sell their sports advertising inventory now will help media companies not only attract advertisers but also build their own unique product offering based on their own sports content across channels. For example, a hybrid approach to selling advertising on a live event that combines both scheduled linear ad units and digitally ad served (DAI) ads sold programmatically, or developing cross platform programs that reach audiences wherever they’re accessing content. Testing the different packaging and pricing models of inventory can help increase the yield and sell-through of a media companies advertising inventory.
Tapping Into The Variety of Sports Content
In 2023-2024, sports revenue in Australia was estimated to be around 17.8 billion AUD. This includes revenue from television, digital platforms, sponsorships, and other advertising channels. With advertising revenue likely to grow in the coming years, it is no surprise that the major broadcasters pay a lot for broadcast rights. The Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL) generate significant revenue from TV rights deals. The AFL’s deal with Seven Network, Foxtel, and Telstra, signed in 2022, was worth 4.5 billion AUD over seven years (2025–2031).
This includes streaming services, social media, and direct advertising on sports-related websites.
Digital advertising in sports includes streaming services, social media, and direct advertising on sports-related websites is estimated to contribute to over 20-25% of the total sports advertising revenue.
New Sports Revenue Streams Generates New Complexities
As media companies embrace different revenue streams from sports, workflows and processes get much more complicated. There are three parts of the business that are under strain, which can dampen the potential revenue and margin of sports revenue.
1. Increased advertiser expectations prevent efficient and timely proposals
Sales teams are dealing with increased pressure when it comes to planning and proposal creation. Advertiser’s expectations have risen along with advancing targeting and measurement capabilities. They want cross-channel proposals that deliver high performance, and quality and experiences for a competitive price that reach their exact audience. To meet these demands, sales teams are required to create proposals from hundreds if not thousands of potential products, from custom sponsorships on a prime-time national game to targeted digital video spots on a local broadcast. Manually combining these elements not only consumes valuable time and resources, but it also hampers sellers’ ability to remain agile and strategic in their approach.
2. Separate Systems and Operational workflows make supporting multi-platform campaigns very hard and labor intensive
Ad operations are significantly more difficult when complex insertion orders need to be programmed across a variety of different platforms for linear, streaming, display and so on. Operations teams can be completely overloaded from the labor required to enter a new order into each system and maintain it throughout the campaign flight.
3. Disparate systems prevent maximum optimization capabilities
When systems are disconnected and teams are bogged down with manual data entry, the business lacks the insights needed to maximize yield. Without a scalable solution to retrieve real-time delivery data across platforms, it’s challenging to optimize campaigns, adjust pricing, or tailor packaging for specific proposals. This inefficiency limits the ability to act strategically and make data-driven decisions to maximize a campaign’s performance.
Creating A Unified Sports Revenue Business
Having separate sales and operations teams with differing processes across multiple channels prevents anyone from becoming a true multi-channel expert. Navigating between channels remains complex and time-consuming. This issue is widespread today, largely due to the fact that each platform has evolved independently with its own unique technologies that don’t integrate seamlessly. As a result, cross-channel coordination becomes a significant challenge, hindering efficiency and scalability.
A cloud-based intelligent revenue management system that unifies channels and streamlines workflow helps solve these challenges by serving as a connector between the data and technology that drives different channels across digital and linear.
Given that viewers will continue to shift their viewing preferences to digital channels, media companies can expect that multichannel advertising is the future of their business. Consumers look at streaming on CTV, mobile and social as all part of a single experience. Similarly, advertisers want to reach those consumers across those channels fluidly. If consumers and advertisers both have these expectations, it is up to the media company to deliver.
The only way for them to succeed is with technology that can help seamlessly manage their entire advertising management workflows from end-to-end. A platform like Operative’s cloud-enabled intelligent media platform, AOS helps media companies unify and activate their data, optimize sales and transform operations.
