Seven’s director of sport Chris Jones is making it home just in time for the AFL curtain raiser on Thursday night, flying into Sydney aboard the NRL’s chartered Qantas flight direct from Las Vegas.

Seven’s first game of the regular AFL Home and Away season is a critical broadcast for Seven and its new owners, SCA. The Sydney Swans v Carlton SCG clash signals the start of a new season (despite the AFL State of Origin clash in Perth mid-February) and the beginning of Jones’ big challenge.

He is tasked with arguably the toughest job in television: making sure Seven, its commercial partners and ultimately the audience get the most out of Seven’s massive investment in AFL rights. As Mumbrella pointed out recently, it’s the most expensive piece of content shown on TV in Australia.

Seven’s interest in the NRL

Speaking from the lounge at Harry Reid International Airport Las Vegas before his flight, Jones explained the network’s interest in Rugby League this year is linked to the Rugby League World Cup rights which will light up Seven and 7plus. The matches are nicely timed to slot into the weeks between the AFL and cricket seasons.

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It was his visit to the NRL’s opening round in Las Vegas in 2025 that helped Seven secure the tournament.

“The rights were up at that time and we were able to do some great business. Going to Las Vegas again this year allowed us to speak to a lot of people about the Rugby League World Cup. We worked on our commentary team too and met with the commercial team for the Rugby League World Cup, in addition to meeting with the team manager of the Australian team.”

When pushed about Seven’s interest in domestic NRL rights, Jones chooses his words carefully. Speculation is that Seven would love a piece of the NRL, particularly the three-game State of Origin series, or maybe Monday nights if they return.

“We’re absolutely thrilled with our AFL rights and the partnership that we have with the AFL is incredible. Of course, as different rights come up, in particular tier one sport rights, we have a look at them and see if there is any space to play within those.

“The NRL is doing a fantastic job at the moment with their sport, and that’s why we’ve invested in the Rugby League World Cup and look forward to staying close with Andrew Abdo [NRL CEO] and Peter V’landys [ARL chair] throughout the year as we build up to the Rugby League World Cup.”

The new regime

James Brayshaw and Abbey Holmes host Friday Night Footy on Seven

Following the merger of Seven and SCA, the recently installed management has indicated a focus on cost savings.

Shortly after Jones was promoted to his current role, replacing Lewis Martin who left unexpectedly in 2024, he set about increasing Seven’s AFL offering to every day of the week, adding the news and analysis show The Agenda Setters to the schedule.

This year a third edition of the show goes to air on Wednesday nights, plus an NRL version is starting on Mondays.

“That seven-day-a-week strategy and all the new shows that we launched are all coming back this year. The most satisfying element of that was it created a 25% incremental reach each week. We did about a million people through our ancillary shows.”

Jones was adamant those shows need to justify their existence with ad revenue covering production costs and then some.

“They need to live and breathe by themselves. There’s no better way of talking about the success of a show than doubling the amount of shows that we did last year compared to this year.”

He added that those Agenda Setters shows and the other programming linked to the football is not just about helping keep the respective football administrators happy.

Australia’s “busiest media CEO”, and a former housemate of Jones’, Craig Hutchison, will host two episodes of The Agenda Setters every week for the time being.

“Getting these shows up and filling out that AFL ecosystem has been a fantastic play from our perspective. Fiscally it’s been a success as well, which is why we’re doubling down this year on it.”

Sports programmers keep close to ad sales

In days gone by, the sports department might not have had much to do with sales. Those days are long gone.

“Gary O’Keeffe [Seven’s head of AFL and sport innovation] and myself get heavily involved. We are speaking every single day with key members of the sports sales team – Rob Maclean, Josh Tanner and Pete Charles. Gary and I will also go out and sit down with some of the clients too.”

Key clients Jones mentioned included Toyota, McDonald’s, AAMI and Harvey Norman.

Other Seven clients wanting the footy audience, and helping pay the AFL rights invoice this year, are Coles, Telstra, Sportsbet, Bunnings, Chemist Warehouse, Industry Super Funds, Hostplus, CBUS, NAB, Asahi Beverages, BWS, Colgate-Palmolive and Uber Eats.

Meanwhile, media buyers have also jumped on AFL packages and ancillary program sponsorships for SEEK, OMO Ultimate, Disney, Bupa, Gulf Western Oil, Jim Beam, Betr, Equip Super and view.com.au.

Former AFL gun Kane back for more in year two of Seven contract

One of the keys to Seven’s success with additional AFL programming last year was the signing of Kane Cornes. He was poached from Nine at the end of 2024 where he was arguably underused. Understandable perhaps as Nine is not an AFL rights holder.

He took on a huge workload at Seven, appearing on The Agenda Setters and joining the commentary team in addition to breakfast radio commitments for Craig Hutchison as SEN.

“He’s an absolute workhorse and he’s just had one of the great holidays, giving himself a good break. He was away for something like 50 days with the family.

“We look at the workload with all of our people. Every one of our AFL talent is booked in to have a week off because it’s a 30-week season. We definitely want to look after our people.”

The growing importance of 7plus is one of the things Jones points to when asked about learnings from season 2025.

“We saw with the AFL Legends game, which was the first time that we’d had exclusive AFL match content in 2025, and all of a sudden a huge audience flocked to 7plus. Following that up with exclusive coverage of the Brownlow Medal and AFLGrand Final helped keep those 7plus numbers growing. More recently we had record streaming numbers for the AFL State of Origin match last month.”

Seven will still turn up for every match it broadcasts

Jones confirmed that cost-cutting won’t impact the broadcaster’s commitment to send broadcasters to every game. It was something Seven highlighted last year with commentator Brian Taylor noting regularly how Foxtel and Kayo didn’t attend every game, choosing to call some from the TV while having only a boundary reporter at the ground.

Jones: “We don’t think it’s possible to call the game in the same way if you’re sitting in a studio instead of sitting at the venue, feeling the atmosphere of the crowd, being able to have that full view of the ground and everything that’s happening. So, again this year, like we did on our cricket coverage, we’ll have our commentators at every game.

“The other thing that we’ve lent into in a big way is my belief that there should be a journalist working on every sporting event we cover.”

Seven continues to invest in sports reporters, with Mitch Cleary and Xander Maguire already on the books, and Tom Morris starting soon after he was poached from Nine.

Coming soon: Triple M AFL with pictures

When asked about potential cross promotions with new colleagues at SCA, Jones sparks up, labelling it “the most exciting thing that could possibly have happened to the Seven Sport team as well as our business as a whole”.

“When you think about Triple M listeners, they are your rusted-on 25-54 audience that traditionally have paid for or streamed sports. We’ve obviously got a great partnership with SEN and Rainmaker [who are outsourced to produce some of Seven’s sport programming] as well, and so we’ve got the ability to speak to that core sport viewer and try and educate them on 7plus and bring them into our ecosystem.

“And once we do, we’re going to provide a whole lot for them. When you think about the Triple M commentary, it’s a very different commentary to Seven’s. It’s a lot looser and a little more fun and certainly male-skewed.

“Once we get things lined up, we could have the Triple M commentary sitting over Seven pictures on 7plus and have our traditional commentary living on Seven. That’s just one of a huge list of ideas.”

He wasn’t prepared to share any of the others just yet, but he’s working through that with SCA’s head of sports content Ewan Giles.

Is live sport taking over free-to-air TV?

Given the guaranteed audiences live sport delivers for advertisers, will it marginalise drama and reality productions?

Jones’ answer: “No, but…

“I work incredibly closely with Angus [Ross, Seven MD television] and Brook [Hall, chief content officer]. They’ve both been wonderful mentors to me. Also Majella [Hay, director of content, unscripted], she is just superb. We’re literally one team. We don’t live in silos. Of course, I’m always prosecuting the best case for sport, but our content doesn’t live in pillars.

“Live sport at the moment anywhere around the world is going gangbusters. It’s appointment viewing and people don’t want to watch it on delay. They watch it live and they’re a captive audience. I keep talking about the sport ecosystem, and it’s definitely something we’re looking to grow.”