That’s the not-so-subtle message from incoming CEO James Warburton, who famously engineered the sport’s move away from a full FTA schedule back in 2015.
Warburton returns to Supercars following a seven-year stint away from the sport that included a four-year tenure as head of Seven West Media.
Seven is set to be retained as Supercars’ FTA partner under the latest soon-to-be-announced deal, but it will again be a minor player compared to Fox Sports.
Currently just six of the 13 rounds feature live coverage on Seven, while Fox carries every Supercars session – plus most of the support action – throughout the season.
Seven’s coverage fires back into life today at the Darwin Triple Crown, while Sydney, Townsville, Bathurst, Gold Coast and Adelaide are also part of its 2025 line-up.
“It’s harder for free-to-air networks,” Warburton explained.
“When you think DAZN bought Foxtel for just under $4 billion; the market cap of Channel 7 is $170 million.
“So when you think about what we’ve got, we’ve got about 40-ish percent of our content available for free.
“The NRL and AFL are more in the mid-30s, but they have got a season and Thursday night, Friday night, Sunday night [matches].
“We don’t have that option because obviously we have got rounds and we have got gaps [between rounds].
“The free-to-air bit of the NRL and AFL is about 20 percent of the money, so 80 percent of $4.5 billion is coming from the streaming partner or the pay TV partner.
“It’s pretty similar for us, if not a little higher.”
While the AFL and NRL weekends are split between FTA and pay TV-only games, Warburton indicated that’s not a model Supercars is looking to replicate.
The current model of only having select events on FTA has been in place since the landmark 2015 deal, which Warburton notes was necessary to ensure the financial stability of teams.
“It comes down to the streaming service needing exclusivity to drive subscriptions,” he added.
“It’s a blend and I think we have got the best blend that we possibly can get, and we have the key races (on FTA).
“The only race on the anti-siphoning list [and therefore required to be available on FTA] is the Bathurst 1000.
“We do understand that issue with the fans, but we virtually didn’t have a sport in those early years until we got the broadcast rights and some of that signed away.”
Broadcast rights are the biggest single revenue earner for most professional sporting codes, but with the latest deal largely done, Warburton has other areas of focus.
He says better engaging with fans online, including on the weekends that Supercars is not racing, will be key to growing the sport.
“What we should be doing a better job of is the digital communication, the highlights, the clips, all that sort of stuff,” he said.
“That’s where we have got to be feeding our fans.
“A lot of the Formula 1 fans that watch Drive to Survive and engage so deeply with it are watching the highlights and are looking more at the social stuff versus actually sitting up into the middle of the night watching the race.
“So that’s the piece we have got to get better at.”
Darwin Triple Crown broadcast start times (ACST)
Saturday, June 21
Foxtel/Kayo – 7:30am
Seven/7Plus – 11:45am
Sunday, June 22
Foxtel/Kayo – 8:00am
Seven/7Plus – 11:30am
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