Fox Footy


Fox Footy is an Australian rules football subscription television channel dedicated to screening Australian rules football matches and related programming. It is owned by Fox Sports Pty Limited, operated out of their Melbourne based studios and available throughout Australia on Foxtel, and Optus Television. The channel is a revival of the former Fox Footy Channel, which was in operation between 2002–2006. The channel recommenced prior to the 2012 AFL season after a new broadcast agreement was reached between the former Premier Media Group, Austar, Foxtel and the Australian Football League.
As of January 2018, the Round 7, 2011 clash between the Gold Coast Suns and Brisbane Lions remains the highest-rating AFL game ever on Fox Footy, recording a national subscription TV figure of 354,745 viewers.

History

It was announced on 28 April 2011 that the channel would be revived for the 2012 AFL season. The channel returned exclusively on Foxtel and its broadcasting partners, under the proposed new name of "Fox Sports AFL", which was later changed back to its original name "Fox Footy". The channel relaunched at 5:00 pm AEDT on Friday 17 February 2012 with the first NAB Cup round-robin match between Hawthorn, Richmond and North Melbourne.
Fox Footy has live broadcast rights to selected NAB Challenge matches, all home and away matches and all finals matches. All matches are broadcast live to air in Standard, High Definition and 4K Ultra HD with no commercial breaks during play. When two live matches are being played simultaneously, Fox Sports 3 broadcasts one of the matches.
From the start of the 2012 AFL season, Fox Footy had become the most watched Pay-TV network in Australia. In 2017, the Australian Football League preliminary finals had 556,000 and 441,000 viewers. The channel currently shows 235 live games a season that includes the JLT Pre Season, Toyota Premiership Season and the Toyota AFL Final Series but shows the Toyota AFL Grand Final on delay as channel 7 has the exclusive rights to that one game.

Programming

Programs

Games

All AFL premiership matches are broadcast live, with no ads during game-play, excluding the AFL Grand Final, which is delayed by three hours due to the Seven Network owning the exclusive broadcast rights. Most NAB Challenge matches are broadcast live.
Coverage of certain matches including Friday nights and public holidays is picked up from the Seven Network. The pre-match and post-match show, are removed from the Fox Footy broadcast, and the official Seven logo is concealed.

Commentators

The following are not match commentators, but appear regularly on Fox Footy panel shows:
The following are former Fox Footy/Fox Sports match commentators