Rebecca Sowden

Excellent, insightful and downright fabulous piece of writing.

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In Australia, the importance, relevance and scale of the sportstech industry is becoming considerably significant with a healthier blend of established entities, emerging scaleups and innovative start ups. ASTN - Australian Sports Technologies Network have now published the ASTN Sports Innovation Report, Third Edition 2024. ✅ The Australian Sportstech sector has annual revenue of $4.69bn, employs 14,906 people with industry revenue and employment increasing by more than 10% in 2024. ✅ This represents 12% of the total sports industry. ✅ Australia’s top 115 companies in the sector represent 85% of the total revenue and 70% of the workforce. ✅ ASTN estimate that in the sports industry, less than 10% of startups have female founders.

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What a day of state league football! The effort and sacrifices these players make to play at this level in a semi-professional environment intertwined with the full-time AFL - Australian Football League athletes are highly underrated. Still in the wake of 35,000 attending the SANFL Grand Final and 25,000 at the WAFL Grand Final. You can't help but think we still leave so much on the table. As an event, the State League Grand Finals are brilliant. What the SANFL does with their festival of football and the activations around the day are special, and as a player, it is a brilliant reward. 7 AFL do a brilliant job covering the game and JAM TV produce a fantastic televised product to maximise what we have. Can we do more? I think we can, I think the VFL can further leverage Grand Final weekend in the AFL and extend this event to make it part of the week. We have seen 13 stand-alone state league clubs play finals across the 3x state leagues and only 5 AFL reserves or aligned teams play finals. That is around 300 players playing at Stand-Alone clubs who are not on AFL lists. These athletes deserve to be playing on the biggest stage they can and in front of packed houses on their biggest day. We need to continue to work to leverage this and keep the best talent playing state league football. https://lnkd.in/gnSJ6MT8

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In what has already been a tumultuous year for NZ media, this might just be its biggest week yet. And one that raises some important questions. The news that the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill will progress has been heralded as a step towards creating much-needed sustainability for our local news media. There are, however, concerns that Meta may respond with a news ban. With good reason - it's already happened in other countries where similar legislation has been introduced. Is this the shot in the arm our media industry needs? Will Meta and Google act in good faith? And what lessons can we learn from Canada and Australia? #NZmedia #FairDigitalNews #MediaIndustry

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If you follow sports, gambling is everywhere. Ads for it smother our television screens, newspapers, podcasts, and social media. Almost half of Australian adults report betting on sports and/or racing in the past year (44%) - with AFL the most common (42%), followed by NRL (32%) and soccer (26%). Some may be quick to dismiss this all as harmless - many "responsible" sports fans enjoy betting on the game, they will say. Yet, "the rise of sports gambling has caused a wave of financial and familial misery, one that falls disproportionately on the most economically precarious households. The industry may claim to want to prevent problem gambling, but its profits (and those of the media companies that promote them) largely come from the compulsions of people with a problem." The article is very much about the US experience, and the relatively recent legalisation of sports betting, but is just as relevant on this side of the Pacific.

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The government should look at this

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I was pleasantly surprised to read about the impact of the Australian Open on the Victoria Economy. According to SportsPro, the Tennis Grand Slam has contributed AUS$3.14bn in economic benefits to Australian state over the past decade. Some of the other impact include: 🏆 The number of full-time jobs generated by the tournament increased 23.48 per cent to record 2,351 🏆 Visitors to Melbourne increased 7.34 per cent in 2024 🏆 The average daily spend per visitor was AUS$308 (US$205), up 6.2 per cent on last year and up 47.8 per cent on the 2020 pre-pandemic Australian Open This is so inspiring on many levels. 1️⃣ It shows that sports should always serve the community not just the organisers 2️⃣ Locals should always benefit even in global spectacles - 32% of all Australian Open attendees were locals, 34.1 per cent were from intrastate and interstate, and 9.58 per cent came from overseas 3️⃣ Thriving sports organisations means thriving communities, if done right Check out this incredible story here 👇

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