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Australia’s Nine Entertainment has announced a deal with Optus Sport to take over its rights to the English Premier League (EPL) and Emirates FA Cup starting from the 2025-26 season. All matches will be shown live and on-demand via Nine’s SVoD service Stan Sport with select fixtures available in 4K, a first for Premier League coverage in Australia. As a result, Optus Sport will close from 1^st August 2025.

Stan Sport already has rights to the UEFA Men’s Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, meaning from next season it will be the home of the two most popular club soccer competitions in Australia. The deal also includes rights to Japan’s J League, the USA’s National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and the upcoming Women’s Euro 2025. 

The move sees Australian telecoms operator Optus (part of Singaporean telco conglomerate Singtel) divesting from media rights entirely, with the content shifting to a more traditional broadcasting group in Nine Entertainment. This follows other high-profile exits by telcos from the broadcasting/streaming space, including BT (British Telecom), which divested its BT Sports offering in the UK to Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in 2023; Orange, which let go of its Orange Cinéma Séries (OCS) channels to Canal+ in France in 2023; and WBD itself, with AT&T letting go of its WarnerMedia assets ahead of the latter’s merger with Discovery in 2022. 

What does it mean for sports fans in Australia?

In contrast to several European markets where soccer rights have fragmented, for example in the UK where English Premier League and UEFA Champions League rights alone are held by three different platforms, the absorption of Optus Sports’ portfolio by Stan means that Australian soccer fans will have access next season to the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League rights under one subscription.  

Stan Sport is sold as an add-on to a regular Stan subscription at an additional $15/month. Stan plans start at $12/month, meaning that to access the content, Stan Sport subscribers are expected to pay a minimum of $27/month.

Until now, Optus Sport cost $24.99/month for a standalone subscription, or $9.99/month for Optus mobile/Internet customers using the Optus aggregation platform, SubHub. These customers will now be eligible for a Stan Premium subscription with Stan Sport for $9.99 – but only until 8^th January 2026. From then, these customers will only get the Optus Sport section on Stan, creating a promotional window to entice Optus Sport customers to continue paying for the fully-fledged Stan.

Despite this development, there remains some competition in the Australian soccer market. SBS will broadcast the 2026 World Cup, while BeIN Sports continues to own the rights to Serie A, La Liga, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, and others. For its part, Paramount+ owns the rights to the A-League, though with this deal expiring at the end of the 2025-2026 season, there is potential for further consolidation. 

What’s in it for Nine/Stan Sport?

According to Ampere’s Sports - Consumer data, almost a third of Australian Sports fans enjoy soccer. Of these, 53% follow the EPL, making it the most popular soccer competition in Australia, ahead of the FIFA Men’s World Cup and the UEFA Men’s Champions League. As Stan Sport already has the rights to the UEFA club competitions, along with Grand Slam tennis and international rugby, this deal strengthens the streamer’s rights portfolio and will help to attract a tranche of new subscribers from Optus Sport.

In its ASX filing, the media group suggested that that over half of Optus Sport subscribers are not currently Stan subscribers. This is corroborated by Ampere’s Media Consumer data (Q1 2025), which found that only 36% of those taking Optus Sport have a Stan subscription. Still fewer Optus Sport subscribers (16%) also take a Stan Sport subscription, meaning most are potential new subscribers for Stan. 

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Update 4th July 2025: Following the publication of this Quick Take, Stan Sport increased its subscription prices from a $15 add‑on to $20 per month, pushing the total monthly cost to a minimum of $32 for a standalone subscription. This will not affect the subscribers accessing Stan Sport through the Optus bundle, who will receive the Stan Sport content for $9.99 a month as originally stipulated.