Why Football Isn’t Covered

A media and ownership explainer

Remembering a different paper

I remember a time when football appeared more often in the local paper.

Not just finals.
Not just opening rounds.
Ordinary weekends, with local results and familiar names.

That memory isn’t nostalgia.
It reflects a different media structure.

When The Mercury was locally owned

For much of its history, The Mercury was owned and operated locally by Davies Brothers. Editorial decisions were made in Hobart, by people who lived in the community the paper served. Local sport mattered because local life mattered. Football sat naturally alongside cricket, bowls, racing and school sport as part of the weekly rhythm.

People like Walter Pless, a teacher by profession and a long-time football writer by passion, contributed regular football coverage over many years. His work reflected what actually happened across Tasmanian grounds each weekend and was widely respected within the football community.

The ownership shift

That structure began to change in the 1980s.

Ownership shifted first to the Herald and Weekly Times, and later into the News Corp Australia stable. This was not a moral turning point. It was a structural one.

National ownership brought economies of scale, syndicated content and different priorities. Editorial focus increasingly aligned with sports that carried national commercial value and broadcast relevance. Coverage flowed towards codes that delivered audience, advertising and subscription return across multiple platforms.

Newspapers and broadcast working together

This is where the link between newspapers and broadcasting matters.

For many years, News Corp newspapers and Foxtel sat within the same commercial ecosystem. Newspapers didn’t just report on sport. They promoted broadcasts, previewed matches, amplified commentary and reinforced which sports were worth watching on television. Coverage and promotion worked in the same direction.

This didn’t require instruction or pressure.
The incentives were already aligned.

Sports like the Australian Football League and elite cricket are not just games. They are media products. Regular coverage supports broadcast value, drives subscriptions and keeps audiences engaged between matches. It is efficient, repeatable content.

Why football sits outside that system

Football, particularly local and community football, sits outside that ecosystem.

It is fragmented.
It spans multiple competitions and age groups.
It is played across dozens of grounds at overlapping times.
It produces participation at scale, but little broadcast leverage.

From a production perspective, it is difficult and expensive content for a shrinking newsroom.

An OTT and broadcast rights perspective

I studied OTT platforms and broadcast rights as part of my AFC coursework. In football-first countries, domestic football anchors the entire media economy. Broadcast platforms exist because football drives subscriptions. Coverage follows naturally.

Australia is different.

We have multiple football codes competing for attention. Legacy media aligned early with some and not others. Those alignments hardened over time.

Legacy influence is the momentum of past decisions. Once a sport dominates coverage for long enough, it begins to feel normal, expected, and permanent. That dominance is reinforced by habit, advertising relationships and audience expectation.

Football arrived late to that system and never fully integrated into the commercial media model.

That does not make football small.
It makes it inconvenient.

But football does get coverage

It is worth saying that football does still receive coverage.

National competitions like the A-League are reported on. The Socceroos and Matildas receive attention, particularly during major tournaments. And football is never absent when there is a scandal, controversy or an opportunity to critique fan behaviour.

But this is not local coverage.

It is national, episodic and easily accessible online. It does little to reflect the weekly reality of football in Tasmania, where hundreds of games are played every weekend by juniors, women, men, referees, coaches and volunteers who rarely see themselves acknowledged.

Personally, I find myself less engaged with the A-League now than I once was. Too many years were spent hoping, pushing and waiting for Tasmania to be meaningfully included. The absence of consistent local coverage also means fewer eyeballs on screens, fewer subscriptions and less perceived value added to broadcast rights. In that context, it is hard to ignore the uncomfortable possibility that this very invisibility is part of the reason Tasmania may never be seen as commercially viable for inclusion.

That distance has changed how I consume the game, but it hasn’t changed how deeply football exists here.

A changing broadcast landscape

More recently, Foxtel moved into new ownership under DAZN, a global streaming platform focused on efficiency, scale and return on investment rather than tradition or cultural legacy. Expensive domestic rights are now assessed through a different commercial lens.

What that means long-term remains to be seen. Ownership changes do not guarantee change. But they do loosen assumptions that once felt fixed.

Not ideology, but structure

I am not a fan of Rupert Murdoch or the political influence his media has exerted over decades. But this is not an argument about ideology. It is an explanation of how ownership, commercial alignment and broadcast strategy shape what is visible and what quietly disappears.

Football did not stop happening.
It stopped being seen.

How football adapted

So football adapted.

At many clubs, media and communications have become near full-time roles. Content is produced to keep sponsors engaged, promote attendance, document participation and tell stories that would otherwise go untold. Websites, social media, newsletters, photography and video now sit alongside coaching and administration.

This is not self-promotion.
It is survival.

A small personal ritual

I still subscribe to The Mercury.

Partly out of habit.
Partly out of loyalty to local journalism.
And partly, if I am honest, just in case.

Most days I skim straight to the back. I flick through the last pages, not really reading, just checking. Looking for a scoreline. A name. A photograph that suggests football has slipped back in.

It rarely has.

That small ritual probably says more than any media analysis. Coverage doesn’t just inform. It trains expectation. And over time, even those of us deeply involved in the game stop expecting to be seen.

Why this matters

This is not a plea for more coverage.
It is a 101 explanation of why coverage looks the way it does.

And perhaps a reminder that what is not reported still matters, still exists and still deserves to be remembered.