The Supercars season may be over with Will Brown winning his first Drivers’ Championship for Red Bull Team Australia which is under the Triple 8 Chevy organisation but there’s still more to it off-track following a huge update regarding the sport’s next TV rights package from 2026 to at least 2030.
It’s not just Fox Sports battling hard to retaining the majority rights alongside Seven, they now officially have competition in the form of Nine/Stan Sport under Nine Entertainment Co. Should Nine win the rights, this shouldn’t be an issue with $$$ since they got Stan as their own paid streaming service that includes Stan Sport.
They currently hold a number of other major sporting rights content with some being simulcasted on Nine that operates similarly to other Pay TV outlets like Fox Sports via Foxtel (cable/satellite) & Kayo Sports (streaming).
With scheduling though, that will be another point of area to discuss if Nine does win the rights. They would like to have all Sunday races live, keep the other six major event races live that Seven is currently doing (which was also Ten has done as a secondary broadcaster back in 2015-2020) and have nearly everything else behind a paywall.
Most Sunday races nowadays begin closer to 4pm and Nine has the NRL on at the same time, but Supercars is indeed one of our national-level sporting leagues much like our motor racing version to our two biggest footy codes – NRL and AFL.
Sunday Afternoon NRL, for example, during the season may be on the main channel over in Queensland and New South Wales with all other states being on 9Gem. However, it’s still better than nothing and sure Nine would at least have some sport to play with for the non-NRL states in Supercars as a lead-in for their 6pm news bulletin.
Remember the Supercars races are held every couple of weeks across 12-13 times throughout the year as yes, the viewership and fan base may not be the same as once was before. Although you can say that ad-free racing proved to be the difference over the last decade & that won’t change anytime soon, but it would be better though if Supercars at least have every Sunday race live for free on top of six full event races every year – that’s the bare minimum we could ask for.
I’m not going to pick a winner out of this but whoever has the most money and most importantly, the appropriate reach they could offer to our viewership would be enough for Supercars to lock in that next TV rights deal.