Corporate sports journalism

It is well known that the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Belusconi owns newspapers, TV stations, the government, and a football team. Hence, one does not exactly expect his media outlets to provide objective coverage. (This is nicely chronicled in the book How Football explains the World.) But, nothing like that could ever happen in Australia, could it?

In most cities if your local football team won the league and had an unbeaten run of 25 games (the most in any football code in the history of the country!) you would expect to see a picture of them with their trophy on the front page, or at least the back page. However, I regret that did not happen this weekend in Brisbane, my hometown. Why would not the city newspaper The Courier Mail want to do that? Well it is worth reading a blog post, Our Premiership and not Yours by Michael Flynn on Four Four Two. A commenter on that post suggests the likely reason that the Courier Mail prefers to not cover real football, and instead fixates on the local rugby league (NRL) team, the Broncos:

The problem is, of course, that the city only has one paper, and that paper is owned by News Limited, and News Limited owns the Broncos...

Broncos as a result get more coverage then any other club in the country, Sydney NRL clubs individually don't get as much coverage in Sydney papers, Melbourne AFL clubs individually don't get the same level of coverage in Melbourne. Unless you live in Brisbane you really can't get your head around just how much over the top coverage the Broncos get here in Brisbane, and as a result the other clubs here struggle to get a look in.