The Australian Football League, the top division of Aussie rules in the country, will stream live coverage of six NAB Challenge pre-season games online after a backlash from clubs.
The league said initially that it had no plans to show coverage of the games, which are not being broadcast by pay-television channel Fox Footy. The channel is showing 21 of the series’ 27 games.
Live coverage of the games will be available via the official websites and applications of the competing clubs, starting tomorrow (Saturday) with Brisbane Lions v St Kilda and Adelaide v North Melbourne.
“We've listened to the concerns of those supporters who don't want to miss a minute of their club competing in this year's NAB Challenge, which is why we're pleased to have overcome a number of significant hurdles to ensure every fan has the opportunity to watch their team compete in every NAB Challenge match,” the AFL’s general manager of broadcasting, Simon Lethlean, said.
“We have encountered some significant logistical, technical and signal delivery issues at some venues but through a great deal of work with AFL Media we've been able to repurpose resources originally slated to produce match highlights to provide live streaming from those venues for the respective club websites and apps.”