{"id":441719,"date":"2026-01-27T23:49:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/441719\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T23:49:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:49:15","slug":"seven-drops-not-commercially-viable-vfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/441719\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven drops &#8220;not commercially viable&#8221; VFL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tFree to Air broadcasts of Victorian games will end a run of five decades.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Seven will discontinue broadcasting the VFL, ending a decade screening games, because it is no longer commercially viable.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Australian reports<\/a> the AFL is yet to make an official announcement but VFL and VFLW matches are set to screen only on the AFL\u2019s own app.<\/p>\n<p>Last year after a Foxtel deal impacted games on Seven, VFL matches were moved to 7mate on Saturdays nights.<\/p>\n<p>But clubs were told audiences were smaller than what they had been in the previous Sunday afternoon slot on the main channel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reality is, we didn\u2019t rate. It was a ridiculous time slot,\u2019\u2019 one official said.<\/p>\n<p>Seven\u2019s decision signals the end of VFL on Free to Air television after more than 50 years.<\/p>\n<p>The ABC began covering the formerly-known VFA in 1987 after it was broadcast for many years on Channel 0\/10.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2022 every VFL game has been streamed live and shown on AFL.com.au and the VFL app.<\/p>\n<p>VFL spokesman Sam Zito advised \u201cBroadcast arrangements for season 2026 are currently not finalised and will be announced ahead of the season. However, we can confirm all VFL and VFLW matches will again be broadcast live and free via AFL channels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Seven was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free to Air broadcasts of Victorian games will end a run of five decades. Seven will discontinue broadcasting&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-441719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}