How much is too much to pay for sport?

Also: Some cool TV shows to check out this week

It’s seemingly a bit of a quiet week of TV ahead of us. But, it isn’t completely dead - there are a few interesting titles to take note of.

There’s the return of Invincible and NCIS: Sydney.

I’m very interested in new Adult Swim animated show Common Side Effects, which is a thriller-comedy about conspiracies related to big pharma. I do appreciate the show is going to be a hard sell for a lot of viewers, though.

Here’s James Poniewozik from NYT:

A figure like Marshall — nerdy, neckbearded, with a prominent belly hanging from his Hawaiian shirt and one big theory that explains it all — would usually be portrayed on TV as, at best, a well-meaning kook, a side character who exists for laughs and exposition. Even in the conspiracy-riddled world of “The X-Files,” he would be more of a Lone Gunman than a Fox Mulder.

Place him in the context of 2025 current events — populist pushback against the medical industry, the politicization of “wellness” language and the strange bedfellows of Make America Healthy Again — and things get even more interesting. Marshall has literally done his own research and discovered that nature holds wonders that “they” are hiding from you.

That “Common Side Effects” takes him seriously as a hero — albeit in the spirit of quirky action-comedy — suggests that we are dealing with an unusual specimen here.

I’m led to believe that there’s no Australian release scheduled for this yet, so maybe expect to see it on Max when it launches locally in a few months.

Thursday also sees the release of Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar, a look at Australian wellness fraudster Belle Gibson. I haven’t seen it yet, but there is a Netflix launch event for it tonight that I’m getting along to, so expect some thoughts to be shared on the show later in the week.

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A sale for Optus Sport?

Last week there were some murmurs about Australian streamer Stan kicking the tyres on the Optus Sport streaming service. Today James Manning at The Australian considers what that would mean for Stan:

At $100m a year for the Premier League, Stan would need to sell an extra 277,000 subscriptions. That assumes an average subscription price of $30 monthly for Stan plus Stan Sport and a 12-month subscription. It doesn’t factor in any lowering of churn at Stan from existing subscribers who could stay on or extend their annual spend, or an increase in the fee for Stan Sport, currently a $15 add-on.

I’m not convinced there’s a huge appetite for subscribers en masse to increase their monthly spend with the Stan Sports add-on. Even an additional five bucks to cover the cost of the Optus Sports purchase (should that be something they actually do… please keep in mind this is still rumour and speculation), it would bring up the cost to a minimum of $32 a month (starting at a base of $12 for the third world standard definition basic plan).

$15-20 a month is fine as a product on it’s own, but as an add-on to a similarly-priced entry product? It just seems like a lot. If Stan Sports is locked in to being a key part of the future at Stan with plans to boost the number of sports on offer, how long is it until it is a stand-alone product?

This becomes a very real and immediate question that I’m sure is being asked within Nine right now as the company sets plans to bid for the upcoming NRL TV rights. Frankly, I’d be surprised to see Stan pay for Optus Sports and the many round ball football sports that service has to offer right before it gets into the expensive negotiations attached to the NRL.

And as an FYI to the many international readers of Always Be Watching, this is what the NRL looks like:

I note that also in The Australian’s media section today is an article by James Madden on a Kanter report showing an 18% rise in AVOD subscribers, suggesting that there is considerable price sensitivity in a market where audience appetite for streaming is growing.

The average number of streaming services per Australian household increased from three to 3.2 in 2024, with ad-supported (AVOD) options adopted by 28 per cent of consumers, according to data released by global audience measurement company Kantar.

That hardly seems like the sort of operating environment where one wants to double subscriber spend on a product that is already an upsell.

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At the movies

Just a heads-up on two films I have had a great time with over the weekend.

Coming soon to Australian cinemas this Thursday is the new Steven Soderbergh film Presence. It debuted last week in the US. It is a low budget, tidy 85 minute haunted house film seen entirely from the perspective of the ghost. The film has Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan (who people may know from This Is Us, but I know best from Soderbergh’s fantastic hospital TV show The Knick) in supporting roles, with a trio of teens leading the film.

In doing the three second pitch, I’d say it is Paranormal Activity meets Kimi. I should warn you… the film is not scary at all.

The other film I saw was the more conventional drama September 5. Told from the perspective of the ABC sports team, it looks at the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage situation. While a lot of the reviews on Letterboxd seem to be focused on the movie telling a story related to Palestine terrorists taking Israeli prisoners hostage, the film itself isn’t interested in that at all.

Instead, the perspective of the film is very much about the responsibilities of media. The film is really canny in using the real life story to talk about the way media frames narratives and perspectives around news, as well as the responsibilities it has to provide protections for those being reported upon.

It is, perhaps, unfortunate that the news story at the focus of this involved the Black September group taking Israeli athletes hostage as it clearly has shifted the narrative in many viewers eyes to the politics surrounding Israel-Palestine when the film isn’t really about that at all. I am reminded of the criticisms of 2024’s Civil War and complaints that the film wasn’t about Trump specifically, when that wasn’t really the point of the film.

September 5 is a smart, very easy-to-watch media nerd thriller and is a very comfortable 94 minutes long. As readers of Always Be Watching, I suspect that films about the media are likely something you’re interested in and this is one of the best of them.

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News Desk

• The Sandman, Netflix’s adaptation of the Neil Gaiman Vertigo comic, has been cancelled after two seasons. This follow’s Gaiman’s own cultural cancellation. Read: THR

• Speaking of comics, has Donald Trump just killed the American comic book industry with his 25% tariff on Canada? Read: Bleeding Cool

• While my biggest takeaway is that Flea is too old to be getting abound in his underpants on stage, I was really impressed by last week’s FireAID concert. Variety has a good write-up.

• Timothy Olymphant joins Anya Taylor-Joy and Annette Bening in new Apple TV+ show Lucky. Read: Variety

• Sundance has pulled two movies from it’s screening portal after leaks. Read: THR

• Polygon has an excerpt from the interesting-sounding new book Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie.

• Maybe Uncle Ben isn’t dead in the new cartoon Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man? Read: Polygon

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Trailer Park

Atrapados debuts on Netflix March 26.

In Argentinian Patagonia's city of Bariloche, journalist Ema Garay rises to prominence in digital media by exposing criminals who manage to evade the law. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Leo Mercer, a respected community figure who becomes the prime suspect in her investigation into the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl. As she searches for the truth, Ema finds herself forced to confront her own demons. Based on the novel Caught by Harlan Coben.

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