In the third instalment of News Corp’s five-part of upfront series, Beyond’27, the focus turned to sport and, to a lesser degree, entertainment. However, it proved to kick goals among marketers and media buyers alike.
Through research from The Growth Distillery, News said it had identified that it was the lives around sport, not just the live action, that captured the most eyeballs for marketers to activate against.
More than half of sports engagement now happens beyond the live event, per The Growth Distillery. That number rises to more than three-fifths among ‘New Wave’ fans – more on those fans later, and, for the avoidance of doubt, they’re not talking about listeners of The B-52s or the Human League.
It has also observed that 56 per cent of entertainment audiences consume content beyond the show and that a third of event-goers want more access and community, as well as exposure to talent through media or otherwise.
News, it said, is particularly well-placed to capture this surging demand through its traditional titles as well as newer initiatives such as CODE Sports, publications including GQ Hype and partnerships with new media, including podcasts and creators.
Free-to-air TV and streaming services, meanwhile, are not the whole game (if you’ll pardon the pun). The average Aussie, according to News, has four-and-a-half streaming services and a third viewers of them can’t decide what to watch at any given point. So much so that two-thirds, more often than not, simply open their usual platform and browse, rather than engage.
But the appetite for live sport and entertainment is growing – stop us if you’ve heard that one before – and there is a new type of audience up for grabs.
The number of die-hard fans, or the ‘Fanatics’, as News and The Growth Distillery called them (you might know them as ‘legacy fans’), are decreasing. There are 6.6 million of them in Australia, representing 39 per cent of sporting fans at large, but their numbers are declining – they’re down 5 percentage points year-on-year.
There are 7.2 million ‘New Wave’ fans, meanwhile, up six percentage points year-on-year and spend, an average per head of $1,700 on sports and adjacent services and products per year. That’s less than the $2,000 on average that the ‘Fanatics’ spend but the new audience is more likely to spend on experiences, hospitality and sports-adjacent stuff, rather than a parmi at the pub before a game and four stubbies per person at the game.
“The value is moving beyond the live moment,” Leigh Lavery, The Growth Distillery’s general manager, told the crowd.
“The real value will be in the lives around the live moment. The routine match coverage gets squeezed. The people around the match don’t, because people are who audiences trust. The event still matters, but the opportunity is expanding into the personalities, rivalries, recaps, rituals and the culture.”
Lives, Not Live
To maximise advertisers’ exposure to that audience, News has established what it’s calling the “Lives, not Live” strategy with three new commercial initiatives.
There’s the MVP Major Event Framework which gives brands a structured model to capture peak event-day attention, extend reach through trusted voices and sustain community participation around major global events including the 2027 Rugby World Cup and 2028 LA Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The framework offers brands network-wide display takeovers, category exclusivity and 100 per cent share of voice for a 24-hour block.
This, News’ newly appointed industry director for sport and entertainment Luke Haynes said, would alleviate the lost salience from traditional sports sponsorships, pointing to data from EssenceMediacom saying that brand recall from sports sponsorships sits at around 29 per cent.
Then there’s the Access All Areas Content Franchise. It’s a social-first video series bridging elite sport and entertainment with lifestyle, fashion and celebrity culture, published across CODE Sports, Vogue Australia, GQ Australia, news.com.au and Tubi.
Finally, there’s the SuperCoach and CODE Sports Creator Network, which embeds brands into weekly fan rituals, fantasy leagues and creator-led content across major codes, including the AFL, NRL, EPL, NBA and NBL.
During the event, News brought out Annalise Dalins, a model, content creator and partner of Collingwood player Josh Daicos along with Denan Kemp, a former Brisbane Broncos player and creator of the Bloke in a Bar podcast and content network to showcase the change in sports audiences and the potential opportunities for brands.
“When I started dating Josh, I was thrown into the world of football,” said Dalins.
“I had absolutely no idea but I really noticed the atmosphere at the start, the community when you attended a game. Then when I attended the F1 and the tennis, I noticed that there was a lot of content being made around fashion… so I decided I was going to bring it to the AFL… I feel like it was a way for people to get to know me and my it was my way to connect with the AFL… My content doesn’t actually feature one minute of the game itself. It’s everything around it and I think it’s interesting to notice that shift.”
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Kemp, meanwhile, said that Bloke in a Bar’s partnership with CODE Sports had been a boon to the show’s listening figures.
“There are journalists now that, honestly, if I had an NRL player with 100 games on and a journalist, the journalism might get more downloads just because people are so intrigued by the story around Rugby League at the moment.”
So far, so sport
News’ Major Events Framework, it said, will work across all manner of live events. However, during the actual presentation, mentions to other forms of live entertainment were few and far between.
Speakers did briefly discuss how News’ titles and content could extend the life and relevancy of an event for brands as it related to the release of major new streaming shows, such as Stranger Things and high-profile music tours.
“The window of attention is so narrow,” said Haynes in relation to Stranger Things. “When it is so narrow, we need to make sure that the peak is as high as it possibly can be.”
But for media buyers in attendance, that greater focus on sport is a feature, not a bug, as it relates to Australian media consumption.
“I feel like Australians lean to sport unless there is a cultural phenomenon,” Lisa Squillace, WPP Media’s general manager of Motion Entertainment.
“They did touch on Stranger Things. Entertainment wasn’t completely missed but sport is a bit of a shinier toy, especially for Australians.”
Pat Fakiye, Squillace’s colleague at WPP Media and EssenceMediacom’s implementation and activation group director, agreed that sport was the easier sell for Australians.
“But it’s on us to challenge them. Their business is vast. It’s how you work with them to hijack these [sporting and cultural] moments. If it is Stranger Things, I’m sure they’ve got a podcast or talent that aligns to that and how we can amplify, get the brand close to that moment without necessarily going to speak to Netflix for an opportunity that might be out of your price range.”
Overall, both Squillace and Fakiye were big fans of News’ improved offering in the space.
“It’s really well done,” said Fakiye.
“It’s increasingly evident that fandom is the way to hijack and get closer to sport. Not everyone can afford a big partnership with a big broadcaster but 70 per cent of the conversation happens outside of that moment. For us, it’s important to have other ways to be in contact with the fans.”
“The event was on point,” added Squillace, “As a brand, you can’t just follow siren to siren. You have to engage in a content ecosystem. People are not just fans of the NRL anymore.”
Squillace added that while WPP Media is “already there” in terms of getting brands into sporting arenas, having News’ content machine behind it will help “change or elevate” its offerings.
For Mel Hopkins, chief growth and operations officer of Delphize and former Optus CMO, News’ adaption to changing media consumption was the real winner.
“I love the fact that they didn’t talk about print circulation, reach, the rise of video and all of the different ad formats,” she told B&T.
“If you’re just buying ad formats these days, it’s lazy. You want to be buying a publication that’s looking at things differently.”
