Australian commercial broadcaster Channel Nine defended its coverage of the Tour Down Under cycle race after more than 1,600 fans signed an online petition to call for the domestic rights for the road race to be returned to public-service broadcaster SBS. The race started on Tuesday and finishes on Sunday.
Nine has been criticised for scheduling live television coverage of the final two stages only, this Saturday and Sunday. It has shown daily highlights at 11.30pm, and has also provided live online coverage, although viewers have complained about the poor streaming quality, according to The Australian.
In previous years, SBS broadcast live and delayed coverage of three stages and provided live coverage online as well as a 6pm highlights show. SBS’s coverage of last year’s event won an award from the Australian Sports Commission.
Nine said that the average audience across the first four days of highlights for this year’s tour was 28-per-cent higher than for SBS’s highlights coverage in 2011.
Hitaf Rasheed, general manager at Events South Australia, the organiser of the event, said the decision to sign a three-year deal with Nine in November was “based on the best possible prospects for its [the event’s] growth.”
“It needs to be made very clear that the decision by us to partner with the Nine Network is not motivated by money or profit, but merely by the opportunity to take the broadcast of the event to new horizons,” Rasheed said.
“Nine has committed to supporting the event not only through broadcasting, but also through its broad portfolio of news and sports programming including Wide World of Sport and the Today Show. Nine has a proven track record of covering major sporting events. We would hope that cycling fans give our new broadcast partner the opportunity to show their support of not only our event but cycling in Australia.”