Having already secured the rights to the Olympic Games in February this year, Nine announced last week that it has also secured the rights to the 2024 Paralympics.
Although the two Games are often considered to be directly related to one another, the Paralympics – short for Parallel Olympics – is a separately run event to the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
After the announcement, Mediaweek caught up with Nine’s chief strategy officer and managing director, Olympics and Paralympics, Matt Stanton.
With the Olympic rights already secured, Stanton says that the addition of the Paralympics to Nine’s suite is “very significant,” and plays into Nine’s overall proposition: Australia Belongs Here.
“We were very keen to secure the rights for both the Olympics and the Paralympics, it was something we wanted to do from the start. The way the process works is that they’re two different rights from two different bodies, so you’ve got to negotiate one before you go through the process with the other. It’s a bit of a strange process, but we were very keen as an organisation to secure both those rights.”
Whilst Nine has the Olympics locked in up to the 2032 Olympics, the Paralympics rights have only been secured for Paris 2024. The difference comes from the fact that Stanton and the team had to go through entirely separate negotiation processes for each set of games.
“We did the deal directly with the IOC for the Olympics, which was for a 10-year package including Brisbane, whereas we did this deal with the Australian Paralympic Committee [APC]. They bought the rights from the International Paralympic Committee [IPC] and were on-selling them, and they only had the Paris rights to sell.
“What will happen post-Paris is that the APC will either get the rights up to Brisbane or they might get one or two, we don’t know at this point.”
As well as his role as chief strategy officer, the gaining of the Paralympics has seen Stanton stepping into the new role of managing director, Olympics and Paralympics.
“It’s really a cross-platform, cross-business role,” Stanton says of the new role. “We’ve got TV, publishing, radio, and digital businesses, they will be working through their own plans around the Olympics and how best to commercialise it. My role is to work with the MDs and the businesses ensuring the plans are right, and also making sure we are joined up across platforms.”
Ultimately, Stanton says that having both the Olympic and Paralympic Games provides Nine with a framework to plan content with over the next decade.
“We’re very excited about this, it just fits so nicely with us. We’re really delighted about the Paralympics, because it really is a really strong part of our purpose and we felt it was a must-have alongside the Olympics.
“We’ve got a good 10 years ahead of us now with the Olympics, which allows us to build and invest in this, rather than just seeing it as a two-week thing. We see this as a long-term, 10-year journey – it gives the company a real base for the next 10 years to build around.”