Nine Entertainment Co. Holdings Limited

Crowds are up, revenue is up and ratings are booming as well.

So it is no wonder that Nine Entertainment wants a piece of the action and they want to help to grow the game even further.

It's the new free-to-air home of the NBL with a Saturday night doubleheader coming up with games on Nine now and the wider business also being used to help grow the game here.

Nine already has the NRL, tennis, the English Premier League football, rugby and the WNBL and Super Netball is coming next.

We both spoke about this idea about you guys sort of trying to build this year-round attention machine through sport.

Tim talked about Live sport being one of the great habit builders.

You've touched on it there a little bit, but how does Nine Entertainment think about sport and where does the NBL fit into this strategy?

I mean, one of the great things about sport, it is a bit more of a must-watch product.

I'm getting off for a bit of a... uncertain start to their French season the domestic season for them so they'll be feeling a lot better about life I think the mouthwatering fixture the next time that we see Champions League is going to be PSG versus Manchester City an absolute cracker of a tie to come so I look forward to that when it happens

Now here in Australia, Nine Entertainment last week celebrated an extension of its broadcast deal with the English Premier League to see Standsport remain its Australian home until the end of 2033-34.

However, on Monday, the Australian report Nine eventually bet against themselves in a process that did not go to tender and quite simply may have seen them pay way overs on their own or of their own accord.

Nine paid and are paying just $60 million a year year until the end of next year for the rights.

But despite all of that, it looks like things haven't quite gone their way, or have they?

Yeah, I think the first comment to make is that this was a report from a News Corp based organization.

So no love lost between the two major media entities in Australia, News Corp and Nine Entertainment Group.

So, you know, you have to take the analysis with a little pinch of salt.

And so there was allegedly a secret deal done and Hadley was going to go from $2 million a year up to $4 million.

But then 2GB changed hands over the Nine Media.

Peter Costello, who was chairman of the Channel Nine board at the time, former federal treasurer, He's a big fan of Alan Jones.

He said, no, we're keeping him on.

On the stock side, the best performers on the ASX, we've got Catalyst Metals, CYL, up 5%.

Levisa, LOV, up 4.9%, and Nine Entertainment, NEC, up 4.2%.

And on the weaker side, we've got Uranium Names coming off the hardest hit today.

Paladin Energy, PDN, down 9.2%.

It, it still amazes me that those allegations...

I, I know, I know every time I write something I go through, you know, a lot of gri-grief with the lawyers at, um, at Nine Media, at The Age.

It just amazes me that that was allowed to be published at the time.

But it was published.

Definitely not, particularly since recent Federal Treasury research said the benefit of the AI boom to Australia could be in AI data centres, but not much else.

Now, over the weekend, Nine Media reported that Australia's Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton called the behaviour of OpenAI's rogue agents in recent months, I quote him, unquestionably dangerous.

He's been in the US meeting AI safety groups.

This is something we're going to hear a lot more about.