Keep Australian Sports Free

Many many countries around the world have to pay to watch sports. Ask any English people and they will soon tell you about the cost to watch their much loved soccer. Talk to Americans and they will tell you the price to watch there national sport baseball.

Soon Australia might be one of these countries. The Federal Goverment will be making there mind up soon. The law that protects these sports from PAY tv expires on 31^st December, 2010.

The sports at risk include:
Motor Sports
Netball
Soccer
Cricket
Rugby League Football
Australian Rules Football
Horse Racing
Olympic Games
Commonwealth Games
Golf
Rugby Union Football
And Tennis

Remember over 1500 hundred hours of free sports were shown on free to air tv last year. If the goverment change the rule how many of these hours will dissapear forever. Plus how quickly could it go. Could we go quite quickly and lose 50% or 750 hours in one year. Or will it happen slowly and we lose 100 hours in the first year and many more to come.

What will our televisions channels look like in 10 years time. Will free to air tv only show limited sport and highlights on the news. All the live action will be reserved for people who can afford pay tv?

If you are like me you could think of nothing worse than missing a great AFL game. However if these rules change we all might be at the mercery of FOXTEL,OPTUS VISION or AUSTAR. If they want to raise their price levels then we have to pay. If they want to charge for installation, then we have to pay.If they want introduce addtional fees (eg direct debit fees, merchant fees or not getting you bill by email fee) we have to pay.

Plus due to the lack of pay tv competion in this country. We cant shop around on price. In most cases we only have one company to chose from. This gives them enormous power as a group to increase prices at will.

In Australia 2,358,719 households have pay tv or around three in 10 homes.

 What do you think it would shoot to if pay tv was allowed to have most of the top sports in this country? Pay Tv takeup would skyrocket. It would be almost adding a extra bill to most households overnight.

Sure you could just say no to sport and not get pay tv. However in Australia where our sport is our national past time this would be a hard pill to swallow. And maybe asking too much of people. I dont think myself and Renee with all our spend thrif ways could reject pay tv if we lost AFL. As we both love it.

There is a website you can go to sign a pertition to try and stop this. http://www.keepsportfree.com.au/ . Please visit this website and lend your support.