Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I'm happy to share with colleagues some other things that Mr Ebeid said in his interview. Mr Ebeid said, and I think this is a self-evident point:

… sports rights have been going up and up and up. The World Cup was no different – we've paid a lot more for the World Cup and at the same time our costs for the World Cup have gone up.

These are I guess what might be considered some self-evident observations. He also said:

So at the end of the day you have to cut your cloth to suit your own funding. One of the things we wanted to make sure was that we retained the World Cup for our viewers …

In reference to the arrangements that SBS entered into, he went on to say, 'It helped us financially. It gave us more product, more games in terms of the EPL, and it allowed us to still have all the main games of the World Cup, so a good deal overall. And, as I say, it enabled us to retain the World Cup where we may not have been able to afford to do it on our own.' So I thought that those might be some helpful comments from the MD of SBS, for colleagues.

Mr Ebeid also went on to say: 'SBS is limited in things like its advertising revenue, so we can only go to a maximum of five minutes an hour, compared to our commercial counterparts, which probably do 13 to 15 minutes. So our ability to monetise is restricted by our ability to increase our revenue, which is hamstrung. So we had to adjust our spend accordingly.' On this side of the chamber, we had a proposition before the Senate to give the SBS greater flexibility when it came to advertising. Those opposite opposed that. So Mr Ebeid made the clear point that greater advertising flexibility would have assisted them in precisely this sort of circumstance.