ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Network Seven has confirmed this morning to reporters that they purchased the broadcasting rights to the speed skating at this year’s PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games.
The question was raised after the popular television channel began exclusively showing the sport, which is the only event Australia has won a gold medal in.
But as there’s a smorgasbord of other more interesting events on, audiences began asking why they weren’t being shown.
“We didn’t buy the rights,” said a Seven spokesperson.
“We’d love to be able to broadcast the luge, that shit is cash. But the reality of broadcast rights and sponsor agreements and whatnot is that we can’t show these events,”
“If we did buy all the rights and had it all covered, we’d be broker than Channel 10. If you really want to watch the other events, you can always get a VPN and watch them online via America or New Zealand. That’s if your interest will hold up to a stream.”
The Seven spokesperson also revealed that they only had the budget to choose one event and that they’d already paid Steven Bradbury to commentate.
“Steven told us he didn’t know any other sports well enough to commentate on them,” they said.
“So we had a meeting with Kerry [Stokes] who said he didn’t care what we did so we just bought the rights to the speed skating. I’ll tell you what, Kerry sure as shit cares now,”
“He said we better show his favourite event, the ski jumping, or else he’ll stop paying for David Koch’s Muay Thai lessons.”
More to come.
