Exploiting the entrepreneurial opportunities presented by a changing AFL television environment: adopting a creative and innovative approach to television broadcasting

Sport is part of Australian culture, and for many Australians, participating in this aspect of culture involves watching professional sport live on television. However, the Australian broadcast market has been disrupted over the last 20 years by the arrival of global corporations, emerging broadcast technologies, changing consumption habits, and increasingly outdated regulation. In this context, this research project aims to specifically identify the major tensions that exist inside the broadcasting and digital sectors of an elite sport – the Australian Football League – and to explore how an entrepreneurial mindset might exploit the creative and innovative opportunities that arise from these tensions. Data from 37 participants and more than 70 documents articulated these tensions, which were interpreted through two theoretical frameworks capable of dealing with complex information. Specifically, the systems model of creativity and structuration theory provided a frame to allow the densely packed data to be disentangled, classified, and analysed, revealing the tensions and accordant opportunities. The concept of the ‘intrapreneur’ was also used to demonstrate how opportunities can be identified and exploited within large organisations such as commercial broadcasters and elite sports administrations. In applying these frames and concepts, this research project found the major tensions inside the AFL broadcasting and digital sectors are predominantly the result of conflict in and between public and commercial self-interests. These tensions can be found in and between each of the major choice making agents in the case study: the Australian Football League, their established and emerging broadcast partners, the regulators of the broadcasting sector, and the supporters who consume televised coverage of the game. Exploiting the opportunities in these tensions may involve realising commercial benefits or public benefits in contexts where either outcome is respectively valued. However, this is not an either/or proposition. Opportunities exist where public benefits may be realised in commercial contexts, and vice versa for public interest contexts, while some opportunities can deliver both public and commercial benefits, regardless of context. Identifying and exploiting such opportunities requires agents to develop an awareness of their context and the resources available, to increase the productive capacity of their network, to be resilient and take risks, to reframe constraints as enablers, and to be supported by senior leaders within their institution. These observations apply equally to consumers as they do to industry-based participants.