I think following a sport or joining a club is an excellent way to make sure one gets outdoors every week. Forcing you to acknowledge that indeed there are other human beings on this planet and not just night elves fending off the Horde. No, I don’t play WoW, but it has unfortunately however infiltrated my brain thanks to the bad habits of neighbouring friends. Anyways, I love going to the game, keeping track of where my favourite team is on the ladder and who needs to lose each week and who needs to win to ensure that we stay #1. I love going to the games and cheering out and meeting up with friends week after week, purely through the game, (we’re members with the same awesome seats each week).

However I have noticed one thing that has spanned not only through the AFL code, which is what I love getting to each home game for the Brisbane Lions, but also into other Australian sporting codes, the choice of sponsorship partners. Now I am all for sponsorship, code wide, of sports. However what I don’t think is right is when sporting associations choose sponsors that would in any way negatively impact the sport as a whole. Unfortunately, there is one sponsor that is quite prominent across Australian sporting codes, and that is of Telstra Bigpond. Bigpond is an Australian Internet service provider that is owned by Telstra, an ex-government owned Australian wide telecommunications body, however enough with the history of telecommunications in Australia.

What Bigpond has done is they have set themselves up to have an exclusive license to media content of the codes, including AFL. This really annoys me, as a lot of the sporting codes firstly are bought out by the pay-tv services and then on sold to other free to air services to be distributed as delayed screenings. So already if I am wanting to catch an away game, I have to wait for free to air to show the match, which might be 11:30 at night concluding at 3am, or even the next day as a replay. A total of 4 channels in my area share the AFL code, making it hard to keep track of what game is playing when and on what channel. Bigpond however, has the exclusive online media license, which could be okay by me, if they didn’t require its viewers to be a Bigpond Internet customer! Which of course I am not!

What they do have however is highlights of the games, not the full match replays, or special content. That would be an okay thing, however it is that slow, and the program and its web-interface is both cumbersome and choppy! I don’t see why I would want to become a customer of theirs anyhow. This is where it all starts to annoy me, to the point of writing this article. I don’t see why any sporting code officials would agree to sign up for such a service, when all it does it hurt the code. It stops new members from actively participating in the code, rural members from getting access to the content, and existing die-hard fans from following the sport when they might have limited access.

Perhaps what sporting codes should do is allow Bigpond or any other online media content provider to place ads through out the content, not limit the accessibility of the content, which in my mind should be free to all that want to follow it. Bigpond has already monetized the sporting content, with their own advertisements. So in effect, they are somewhat forcing fans of the sport to change their Internet plans to them if they want to access the content, and they are grabbing revenue from outside non-related companies by installing ads in the content.

Sporting officials! You should do what is in the best interest of the sport, surely you can develop an online media solution and cover the costs through grabbing online sponsors to offset the costs or even profit from the service you have set up. That way you won’t be limiting access to the sport, more fans, more members, more money from sponsors. No, I will not sign up for an account with you poor service Bigpond!