Seven has released its line-up of sponsors and partners for the season before the AFL season kicks off on Thursday, 6 March.
This year the network is welcoming Toyota, McDonald’s, AAMI and Harvey Norman as broadcast partners for the full season.
They will be joined by other broadcast sponsors, including Google, Coles, Sportsbet, Bunnings, Chemist Warehouse, Industry Super Funds, Hostplus, CBUS, Telstra, NAB, Asahi Beverages, Uber Eats, OMO Ultimate, Cash Converters, Colgate-Palmolive, BWS and Virgin Australia.
Brands with major AFL packages or local market sponsors include Seek, HBF, Disney, Bupa and Complete Home Filtration.
Fan-favourite TV show, The Front Bar returns in 2025 with premier partner Lion, plus program sponsors Kia, Youi, BWS and Sportsbet, and this year OMO Ultimate is the naming rights sponsor of The Wash Up on Sunday night, with Virgin Australia, DURO-TUSS Cough Products and Sportsbet have signed on as sponsors of The Agenda Setters.
Under the new AFL rights package, Seven will broadcast 23 Thursday night games, 24 Friday nights, State Footy Saturdays, 25 Sunday afternoons, and five Sunday night matches, along with all marquee games, the entire Finals Series, the AFL Grand Final, and the Brownlow Medal, marking the most extensive free-to-air AFL and AFLW coverage in history.
Fans in NSW, QLD, SA, and WA can watch every game featuring teams from their home states, complemented by the lineup of new commentary and analysis shows.
Rob Maclean and Kate Finney.
Speaking to Mediaweek, Seven’s National Television Sales Director, Katie Finney and National Sport Sales Director, Rob Maclean said Seven approached this historic year with a fresh perspective, after an incredible 2024 where the network’s AFL and AFLW coverage reached 17.4 million Australians.
“This is a real line-in-the-sand moment for us,” said Finney.”It’s an opportunity to build off success but do things differently with brands as they live across our full ecosystem for the first time.”
“We’ve always said that Seven AFL is for everyone, and it absolutely is,” added Maclean. “So whether that is the legacy fan who loves the expert analytics or the lean-back fan who only watches the marquee games but loves the player stories – we’ve got them all.
“Our ambition is to feed the footy habits of all fan-types right across the course of the week, and leverage our different digital rights to create new and different ways in for brands.
“From 6 March, we will present live streaming of matches broadcast by Seven, full replays of matches broadcast by Seven, highlights of all matches of the AFL season including the Fox exclusive matches, extensive social clips, FAST channels and more exclusive, digital-first content.”
Seven’s new 2025 AFL commentary team.
Expanding audience reach and brand integration
McClean said his team had learned key lessons from Seven’s recent Summer Of Cricket coverage and were hoping to attract new demographics through digital expansion.
“With cricket, there were questions being asked by the market about where our streaming audience would come from. Would it simply be a migration of audiences from linear to our streaming platform?
“But that wasn’t the case. If you look at the Big Bash, we saw a slight change in our audience profile to younger – but not only from the streaming introduction.”
As a result, Seven are trialling demographic-specific feeds to expand their reach. On select games, the AFL Kids Broadcast will feature animated graphics and younger commentators, offering a fresh entry point for family-friendly brands.
“It’s effectively a pop-up feed that sits on 7plus alongside the primary broadcast,” said McClean “It’s fully geared towards appealing to families and effectively kids. It’s a youth orientated package with pared down information, 3D- play avatars, plus younger callers and interviewers working side-by-side.
“It’s just a great way to onboard different brands who are very much wanting to play in that target market.”
The power of the 30-second goal break ad
One of the most compelling components of Seven’s AFL advertising package is the single-ad break after a goal. Unlike traditional ad breaks, where viewers may disconnect, Finney said this single moment captures fans at their peak emotional engagement.
“It is the most powerful 30 seconds in Australian advertising because it’s standalone,” she said. “The attention is so much higher, whether it’s your team or the competing team has just kicked that goal. And as soon as it happens, that advertisement plays and you’re not getting up to make a cup of tea, you’re there and focused.
“A lot of our AFL partners and sponsors are really tailoring their creative around the sport as well. So it really connects at that level and then drives stronger outcomes for them.”
Streaming growth and data-driven advertising
7RedIQ, Seven’s own data visualisation platform, has shown that even without full digital rights on games, AFL fans have grown by 67% in two years, allowing for precision targeting in brand messaging.
“Streaming the AFL Grand Final (which had a total TV audience of 4.06 million) and the Brownlow Medal (1.27 million total TV viewers) and populating that platform with more footy-related type content means that even in the absence of streaming rights, we’ve been growing the number of people coming to the platform to connect with footy content,” said Maclean.
“Now that’s set to explode, obviously, across the course of this season.”
Competition with Foxtel?
For the first time this year, Foxtel and Seven are going head-to-head with their AFL content. The new seven-year $4.5 billion broadcast deal struck between the AFL, Seven and Foxtel means fans will get more content than ever before.
But how does that rivalry play out commercially?
“We always look at the market in terms of what others are doing, ” said Maclean. “Particularly when you’re both playing the same role in broadcasting the sport. They’ve got a role to play with AFL just as we do, and we do work together on the games we simulcast.”
“There are brands that just work with Foxtel and brands that just work with Seven so we look at what they do and they look at what we do, and it’s a healthy competition,” added Finney.
Measuring Success: Delivering value to brands
Finney is in no doubt that success throughout the season is multi-faceted, driven by clients own individual needs and benchmarks but “we put high ambitions on the work we create with brands and how that connects,” she said.
But both admit their overall strategy will help brands in three over-arching ways:
Audience growth and engagement: Metrics from Gemba and other research providers track campaign performance and brand health improvements.
Innovative brand activations: Success stories like AAMI’s “Save the Grand Final” campaign demonstrate the effectiveness of deep brand integration.
Short-term consumer response: Brands are leveraging digital expansion to drive immediate consumer action.
“The new rights package really is really is a game-changer for us,” said Finney, “We’re super-pumped for how we can connect with audiences. There are a lot of Australians now who don’t have an aerial, and so they’re watching linear TV linear through streaming. We’re going to be able to give the AFL to these viewers for free and that’s a great privilege.”