AFL Broadcast Rights and What the TV Money Pays For
AFL TV rights explained: the 4.5 billion dollar 2025 to 2031 deal with Seven and Foxtel, what each partner shows, and where the money goes.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Money18 min read
- Deal value
- About 4.5 billion dollars
- Term
- Seven seasons, 2025 to 2031
- Average annual value
- About 643 million dollars
- Previous deal annual value
- About 473 million dollars
- Free-to-air partner
- Seven Network and 7plus
- Subscription partner
- Foxtel and Kayo Sports
- Matches live on Foxtel each round
- All nine
- Announced
- September 2022
The current AFL broadcast rights agreement is worth about 4.5 billion dollars across seven seasons, from 2025 to 2031, split between the Seven Network on free-to-air and Foxtel on subscription. That works out at roughly 643 million dollars a season, against about 473 million a season under the shortened deal it replaced. When it was announced in September 2022 it was the largest sports broadcast rights agreement ever signed in Australia.
Those AFL TV rights are the financial spine of the competition. Broadcast income is the largest single component of the revenue the AFL collects centrally and then distributes to clubs, and it is the number that indirectly sets the salary cap, because the collective bargaining agreement gives players a defined share of forecast industry revenue. When the broadcast deal moves, club distributions and player payments move with it. In 2025, the first season of the agreement, the AFL's revenue rose about 164 million dollars and its distribution to clubs rose to about 461.5 million.
This page sets out what each partner actually holds, how the free-to-air and subscription packages divide the round, what the anti-siphoning scheme does and does not protect, how the money travels from a broadcaster to a football department, and what is worth watching before the deal expires in 2031.
The headline numbers
The agreement covers the seven premiership seasons from 2025 through 2031 inclusive. Total contracted value is about 4.5 billion dollars. The AFL and its partners have described an average annual value of about 643 million dollars, and Seven has indicated the deal escalates at a compound annual growth rate of roughly 3.6 per cent, so the later years are worth more than the earlier ones.
The predecessor arrangement was a two-year bridging deal covering 2023 and 2024 at about 473 million dollars a season. That deal itself was a renegotiation of a longer agreement disrupted by the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, which is why the recent history of AFL rights looks messier than the underlying trend.
A short history of AFL rights
Australian rules football has been on television since the 1950s, and the relationship between the code and its broadcasters has gone through three distinct eras.
The first was regional and fragmented. The VFL was a Victorian competition and its television deals were essentially Melbourne deals, with the rest of the country receiving delayed coverage or none. The second era began with national expansion through the 1980s and 1990s, when the competition became genuinely national and a national television package became something worth bidding for. Rights moved between networks across that period, with Seven holding the game for long stretches, Nine and Ten taking packages at various points, and pay television entering the picture once Foxtel had subscribers to sell.
The third era is the one we are in: a stable duopoly of one free-to-air network and one subscription operator, with the value rising sharply each cycle and the packages defined by exclusivity windows rather than by which network gets which club. The pandemic interrupted the pattern in 2020, forcing a renegotiation of the deal then running and producing the short bridging agreement that covered 2023 and 2024.
Two things have been constant across all three eras. The Grand Final has never been paywalled, and the league has never sold the rights without at least one credible rival bidder in the room.
What Seven holds
Seven's package is built around visibility rather than volume. The network is contracted to a minimum of around 81 matches a season across markets, which averages out to at least three live games a round, and it takes the events that matter most to a general audience.
That means every designated marquee match live: Anzac Day, the Dreamtime fixture, Good Friday, Easter Monday and the King's Birthday match, plus a set of additional marquee games nominated each season. It means the Thursday night match through the first fifteen rounds, a window that expanded significantly under this deal. It means the Brownlow Medal count. And it means the entire finals series, up to and including the Grand Final.
Seven streams its own coverage on 7plus. Under the current deal that streaming right extends to the games it produces, the Brownlow, and all AFL and AFLW finals including the Grand Final, for Australian subscribers.
What Foxtel and Kayo hold
Foxtel's package is the opposite shape: everything, all the time. All nine matches of every home and away round are live on Foxtel and Kayo Sports, with the finals alongside them, and Fox Footy produces its own dedicated commentary for each game rather than taking a shared feed.
Foxtel also holds windows of exclusivity. In recent seasons the Saturday block through the opening rounds has been exclusive to Foxtel and Kayo, meaning a free-to-air viewer had no live Saturday football at all in that part of the season. Those windows are set season by season within the contract rather than fixed for seven years.
| Package element | Seven and 7plus | Foxtel and Kayo |
|---|---|---|
| Home and away matches | At least three live per round | All nine live every round |
| Thursday night | Live through the first fifteen rounds | Live |
| Marquee matches | All, live | All, live |
| Finals series | All matches live | Carried across the series |
| Grand Final | Live, and protected by anti-siphoning | AFL retains the timing decision |
| AFLW | Minimum thirty home and away games plus finals | Full home and away season and finals |
| Brownlow Medal | Live, including on 7plus | Carried |
The Grand Final and why it is treated separately
The Grand Final is the one match the AFL does not simply hand over with the rest of the package. Its free-to-air position is protected by law through the anti-siphoning list, and the league has kept the decision on its start time as an annual choice rather than contracting it away for seven years.
That reservation matters more than it sounds. Moving the Grand Final out of its traditional Saturday afternoon slot would be worth a great deal to a broadcaster and would change the character of the day for everyone attending. Keeping the decision annual means the AFL can be lobbied but not bound. The Grand Final guide covers what the day looks like at the ground.
Anti-siphoning, explained properly
The anti-siphoning scheme is widely misunderstood. It does not guarantee that a listed event will be shown free to air. It controls the order in which rights may be sold: a subscription broadcaster cannot acquire exclusive rights to a listed event unless the free-to-air rights have first been made available to a commercial or national broadcaster.
If no free-to-air network wants an event, the scheme does not conjure a broadcaster into existence. It is a right of first refusal enforced by regulation, not a public service obligation.
The AFL Grand Final sits on the list. So do the Melbourne Cup, the NRL Grand Final, State of Origin, the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, Socceroos and Matildas World Cup matches and qualifiers, and the Australian Open. Australian cricket has its own extensive listing, covered in the Australian cricket broadcast rights guide.
The 2024 reforms and the streaming gap
For years the scheme had an obvious hole. It regulated television, and the sports viewing market had moved substantially to streaming. A digital-only service could in principle acquire exclusive online rights to a listed event that a traditional pay television operator would have been barred from taking.
Parliament passed the Communications Legislation Amendment covering prominence and anti-siphoning on 4 July 2024, and the reformed scheme commenced on 17 December 2024. It extended regulation to online streaming services, so digital rights to a listed event may be acquired exclusively by a subscription streamer only where the television rights have first been offered to a free-to-air broadcaster.
The list was expanded at the same time, growing the number of regulated events by roughly thirty per cent, from around 1900 to around 2500. Among the additions were AFLW premiership finals and NRLW premiership finals, which is a meaningful statement about where the women's competitions now sit in the national sporting calendar.
The prominence framework
The same legislation introduced a prominence requirement, aimed at a different problem: making sure free-to-air apps are findable on smart television home screens rather than buried beneath whatever the manufacturer has been paid to promote.
For a football supporter the practical effect is modest but real. A scheme that protects the Grand Final's free-to-air status is worth less if a viewer cannot readily locate 7plus on a new television. Regulating the shelf as well as the goods is the logic.
- Live on Foxtel and Kayo9
- Live on Seven and 7plus3
A standard nine-match home and away round under the current agreement. The free-to-air figure is the contracted minimum of live matches per round, not a cap, and Seven carries more in rounds containing marquee fixtures.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Live on Foxtel and Kayo | 9 |
| Live on Seven and 7plus | 3 |
Delayed telecasts and the interstate complaint
The most persistent grievance about AFL coverage is not the price, it is the delay. Seven schedules its coverage market by market, and in some states a match is broadcast on delay so that the local team's game gets the live window. A supporter of an interstate club living in Melbourne, or the reverse, can end up watching a match already decided.
The current deal made this more visible because it expanded the Thursday night window and added marquee matches on Saturdays, which increased the number of occasions where two live free-to-air options would have collided. The subscription package is the answer the market offers, and that answer costs money, which is precisely the objection.
How the money reaches a club
No broadcaster pays a club. Money flows to the AFL, which pools it with league sponsorship, finals revenue and its own commercial income, and then distributes it under the model described in the club finances guide.
In 2025 that distribution came to about 461.5 million dollars across the eighteen clubs, against about 420.8 million in 2024. The league also directed about 97.7 million to game development, about 20.2 million to infrastructure and about 77.3 million in total to players including revenue share, and still recorded an underlying operating surplus of about 67.9 million.
The distribution is deliberately unequal. Every club receives an equal base amount and the balance is allocated towards clubs carrying structural disadvantage, so the broadcast dollar does not land evenly even though it was earned by all eighteen clubs collectively.
How the money reaches a player
The route runs through the collective bargaining agreement. Players receive a defined share of forecast industry revenue rather than a flat negotiated figure, and broadcast income is the dominant component of that revenue.
The consequence is that player payments rise in steps that track broadcast cycles rather than smoothly with inflation. Total player payments per club jumped close to two million dollars between 2024 and 2025, which was the largest single-year rise the competition had seen, and it happened because a bigger broadcast deal started. Anyone modelling future AFL salaries is really modelling future media rights.
Why the term is seven years
A long term suits both sides for the same reason: certainty. The AFL can negotiate a collective bargaining agreement, plan expansion and set club distributions against a known revenue line. Clubs can sign six-year player contracts with a reasonable estimate of what share of the 2029 cap they will consume. Broadcasters get a fixed content spine around which to build a winter schedule and a subscription proposition.
The risk sits with the league. If the media market grows faster than 3.6 per cent a year, the AFL has sold cheaply for the back half of the term. If it contracts, the AFL has done very well. Seven-year deals are a bet on the direction of an industry that has changed shape twice in the last fifteen years.
- Set the packagesThe league decides how many matches sit in the free-to-air package, which fixtures are marquee, and which windows can be sold exclusively to a subscription partner.
- Test the marketRival bidders are invited in so the incumbents are not the only price signal, which is why Nine with Stan and Paramount with Ten were both engaged in 2022.
- Negotiate the termLength, escalation rate and the treatment of possible expansion are settled together, because each affects what the packages are worth.
- Protect the listed eventsThe Grand Final's free-to-air position is fixed by the anti-siphoning scheme, so the agreement is built around it rather than negotiating over it.
- Convert to distributionsThe contracted revenue is fed into the club distribution model and into the players' revenue share, which is where the number stops being a media story and becomes a football one.
A structural description of the process the AFL followed for the 2025 to 2031 agreement, not a timetable. Each stage overlaps with the next in practice.
What it costs a household to follow the season
The practical question for most supporters is not what the deal is worth but what following the game costs them.
Free-to-air access is free at the point of use. Three live matches a round, every marquee fixture, the Thursday night game through the first fifteen rounds and the entire finals series arrive without payment, on broadcast television or through 7plus with a free account. For a supporter who follows one club and accepts that some of that club's matches will arrive on delay, that is a genuinely serviceable way to watch a season.
Full live coverage requires a subscription, and the subscription market has moved from cable to streaming almost entirely. Kayo is priced as a monthly sports service, and the cost of a full home and away season plus finals runs to a few hundred dollars depending on tier and any promotional pricing. Radio remains free and covers every match.
The gap between those two positions is the whole political economy of Australian sports broadcasting. Anti-siphoning guarantees a floor of free access to the events considered nationally significant. Everything above the floor is a commercial market, and the AFL has an incentive to keep the paid tier attractive enough to sustain the subscription half of the deal.
Why the AFL does not sell direct to supporters
Several major sports leagues around the world have experimented with bypassing broadcasters and selling their competition straight to supporters. The AFL has not, and the reasons are worth understanding.
A direct-to-consumer product would keep the whole subscription margin, but it would also require the league to fund production, build and maintain a streaming platform, carry the customer service load, and absorb the subscriber acquisition cost that a broadcaster currently bears. It would forfeit the promotional weight a free-to-air network puts behind the competition in news bulletins, entertainment programming and cross-promotion, which is worth a great deal in a market where the AFL competes with the NRL for attention.
Most importantly, it would trade a contracted 4.5 billion dollars of certain revenue for an uncertain subscriber forecast. The league distributes that money to eighteen clubs that plan multi-year budgets and multi-year player contracts against it. Certainty has a value of its own.
The likeliest evolution is not the AFL going it alone but a streaming-native buyer taking the subscription package at the next cycle, which would change who pays without changing the structure.
Regional and remote coverage
A national competition has to reach viewers in places where commercial television economics are marginal. Regional affiliates carry the free-to-air coverage across most of the country, and the anti-siphoning scheme's reference to national broadcasters exists partly for this reason.
The practical experience varies. A viewer in regional Victoria or regional Western Australia generally gets the same free-to-air matches as the nearest capital city, sometimes on a different schedule. In remote areas, satellite services and the national broadcaster's radio coverage do more of the work than commercial television. Streaming has improved matters where connectivity allows and made no difference where it does not.
This is the part of the rights conversation that gets least attention and matters most to the smallest number of people, which is generally how coverage obligations end up being written.
Foxtel, ownership and what it changes
Foxtel's corporate ownership changed hands during the life of this deal, with the sports streaming group DAZN completing an acquisition reported through 2025. For a supporter, a change of owner at a rights holder does not alter the contract. The obligations attach to the rights, not to the shareholder.
It does matter for the next cycle. A subscription partner with international sports streaming ambitions values Australian football differently to a domestic pay television operator defending a cable subscriber base. That difference will show up when the 2032 rights come to market, not before.
International rights and watching from overseas
Australian rules football has a small but persistent overseas audience, concentrated in expatriate communities and in a handful of markets where the game has a following. The AFL sells international rights separately from the domestic agreement and has increasingly routed overseas viewers to its own subscription product rather than through local broadcasters.
For a traveller, the practical position is that the domestic Kayo and 7plus services are geographically restricted, and the AFL's own international offering is the sanctioned route. The same pattern holds for Australian cricket, as set out in how to watch cricket in Australia.
What the broadcast deal does to the fixture
Money shapes the schedule. The Thursday night window exists because a broadcaster values a standalone free-to-air match to open the round. Saturday exclusivity windows exist because a subscription partner needs something the free-to-air viewer cannot get. Marquee matches are contracted as free-to-air because their audience is national rather than partisan.
None of that is hidden. The AFL sets its fixture with commercial obligations in the room alongside travel, competitive fairness and stadium availability, and the fixture guide covers how the competing pressures are resolved. Supporters who complain that the fixture is designed around television are correct; it is one of several things it is designed around.
Where the game is actually played
Broadcast value is not distributed evenly across venues either. A match at the MCG with a large crowd and a full complement of camera positions is a different television product to a Sunday afternoon fixture at a smaller ground, and the scheduling reflects it. Marvel Stadium, with a closing roof, offers a guarantee no open ground can: the pictures will look the same regardless of Melbourne weather.
That reliability is worth money to a broadcaster, and it is one reason the AFL's purchase of the Docklands venue in 2016 made commercial sense beyond the tenancy terms.
AFLW inside the deal
The women's competition is contracted within the same agreement rather than sold separately. Seven takes a minimum of around thirty home and away matches plus the finals series and the AFLW Grand Final; Foxtel and Kayo carry the full season.
Bundling the AFLW with the men's rights is a deliberate choice. Sold separately at this stage of its development it would fetch relatively little; sold together it acquires guaranteed free-to-air exposure that builds the audience which will eventually justify a standalone valuation. The 2024 anti-siphoning reforms adding AFLW finals to the protected list points in the same direction.
Gambling advertising and the broadcast
Wagering advertising around live sport has been under sustained political pressure in Australia, and restrictions on when and how betting can be promoted during a broadcast have tightened over successive reviews. That matters commercially in two directions at once.
For the broadcasters, wagering was a large and reliable advertising category, and constraints on it reduce the revenue a live football window generates. For the AFL and its clubs, wagering partnerships have been a meaningful sponsorship category that has narrowed. Both effects feed back into what a future rights package is worth, because a broadcaster prices a package on the advertising it can sell against it.
Anyone following this debate should read proposals carefully. Rules that apply during a live broadcast, rules that apply to stadium signage and rules that apply to a club's own commercial arrangements are three separate regimes, and coverage frequently conflates them.
Data, statistics and the second screen
The rights the AFL sells are not only pictures. Live match data, official statistics and the digital products built on them are separately valuable, and they underpin fantasy competitions, in-broadcast graphics, club analysis tools and third-party applications.
This is the fastest-moving part of the market and the least visible to supporters. A live data feed with low latency is worth a great deal to anyone building a product that has to update while the ball is in the air, and the arrangements governing who may resell that feed are more tightly controlled than the arrangements governing highlights.
For the ordinary viewer the effect is simply that the statistics on screen, in the official app and in the broadcaster's app tend to agree with one another, because they come from the same source. That consistency is a contracted outcome, not a coincidence.
How this compares with the other codes
The AFL agreement is the largest single sports rights deal in the Australian market by annual value. The NRL operates a comparable split model with its own protected events, and its economics are shaped by the absence of a draft, as covered in the NRL salary cap explainer.
Cricket is the most instructive comparison, because it sells something structurally different: a summer of overlapping formats aimed at different audiences, with Test matches, international white-ball cricket and the Big Bash League all in the same package. The AFL sells one competition, nine matches a week, on a fixed weekly rhythm. That predictability is part of what makes the AFL package valuable.
What to watch before 2031
Four things will decide what the next deal looks like. Whether the competition expands to nineteen teams and adds content the current agreement anticipated but did not price precisely. Whether streaming-native buyers bid seriously for a domestic football package rather than leaving it to the incumbents. Whether the prominence and anti-siphoning framework holds in its current form through the next parliamentary cycle. And whether AFLW audience growth reaches the point where it could be sold as a package in its own right.
The number to watch in the meantime is simpler. Each year, compare the AFL's distribution to clubs with the previous year. That single figure tells you whether the broadcast agreement is delivering what the industry planned around.
A second, softer indicator is worth tracking alongside it: how many matches a season actually appear live on free-to-air in your own state. The contracted minimum is a national average across markets, and the lived experience of a supporter in Perth, Adelaide or Hobart can differ considerably from the figure quoted in a media release. If that gap widens over the back half of the deal, it will become the loudest issue in the next negotiation, because it is the one supporters can measure for themselves without reading a single financial statement.
Where to go next
For where broadcast money ends up, read how AFL clubs make money. For the day the whole deal is built around, read the AFL Grand Final guide. For the competition structure the broadcasters buy, see the finals system and the guide to attending a game.