Australia is in the grips of football fever, with the world's best women players descending on the nation (and Aotearoa New Zealand) to showcase their sporting prowess.
But despite football being touted as the "world's game", just 15 of the 64 matches in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup.
All Matildas games, major quarter-finals, the two semi-finals and the World Cup decider are being broadcast live on the Seven Network and their streaming platform 7plus.
While all 64 matches are available on Optus Sport, viewers need to pay a fee to access the majority of them. Fans with a paid subscription can enjoy live games and replays, while those with a free account can watch highlights, scores, news, and select matches.
By comparison, during , which SBS held the broadcast rights to, all 64 matches were available on free-to-air TV and SBS on Demand.
Matildas fans celebrated hard after Australia's 4-0 win over Canada on Monday. Source: AAP / Joel Carrett
"It's the biggest sport event in Australia since the Sydney 2000 Olympics," he told SBS News.
"It's the biggest event I've ever seen devoted to women's sports … and it's getting bigger.
"Not to take advantage of Australian multiculturalism and the rise of women in sport, at the same time, in a massive, global sport event, just seems to be a missed opportunity."
Hunter Fujak, a lecturer in sport management at Deakin University, said while it would be "fantastic" if all matches were broadcast on free-to-air TV, he believed the current level of coverage was sufficient.
"I guess the reason we can complain about the lack of coverage now is because we have been spoilt for choice in the past," he told SBS News.
"But … there are very few other places in the world that get as much free sport as we do, so we are the outlier rather than the norm."
What role does Australia's anti-siphoning list play?
In an effort to ensure Australians could continue to watch major cultural events on free-to-air television after the introduction of pay TV, the anti-siphoning list was created.
Established under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, it aimed to give free-to-air networks the first opportunity to buy the TV rights to events on the list before pay TV providers.
The communications minister has the power to add or remove any event from the list.
While the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup - the official name of the men's championship tournament - is included on the list, the women's isn't.
Rowe said that given football - particularly women's football - has had "difficulty" establishing itself in Australia, it would have benefited greatly from the competition being included in the list.
"You might say people have been asleep at the wheel," he said.
"I think there was a feeling, 'Well, this is only the Women's World Cup'."
But Fujak said the anti-siphoning list wasn't a silver bullet.
"People think of the list as being basically this roll-call list of sports that must be on free-to-air," he said.
"In practice, that's not how the anti-syphoning list works. There's actually some sort of tricky, managerial practices that are able to circumvent the list."
The number of Women's World Cup matches broadcast on free-to-air TV wasn't "inconsistent" with sports like the AFL or NRL, which are on the list, Fujak argued.
"Even if the Women's World Cup was on the anti-syphoning list, I actually don't think it would change the outcome at all," he said.
"All that would happen is that Channel Seven would win the rights to the games, they would appreciate that they're not going to get sufficient ratings for the games outside of the Matildas to be of commercial value, and then they would simply on-sell those additional games to Optus Sport or another pay TV provider.
"So in my war-gaming of the scenario, we would end up with the exact same list of the exact same games on television, on free to air and the exact same games on pay TV, because, you know, the games that are on television are the most significant ones, which can achieve the biggest commercial ratings across the nation."
Rowe disagreed with that assessment, arguing that was why many free-to-air broadcasters had supplementary channels.
"Lots of premium sport now doesn't go on the main channel, you might notice," he said.
Rowe said that given Australia's large migrant population, there would be demand from fans of other 31 countries competing in the tournament.
"All of those nations have resident communities with direct attachment to that nation … you'd want to trigger their interest," he said.
"If you're a Colombian or a Haitian or whoever, you can't get to the games, you can't afford it or you live in a regional area or whatever, it would be great to be able to watch it free on television."
Not having more games available on free-to-air TV could also limit the ability to build on the momentum of the tournament and grow the game in Australia, Rowe argued.
"What you don't want is the 'sugar hit' of the big event," he said.
"Every big event says, 'Oh, this is great, we're on the board now, you're gonna see us everywhere, we'll get lots of corporate money and lots of participants' and so on.'
"But if you don't kind of build it up from below, through the leagues, if you don't have a strong domestic sporting infrastructure to take on the giants - in particular the AFL - then it's no good just having these big moments."
The federal government is conducting a review into the anti-siphoning scheme to "ensure it remains fit for purpose for the contemporary media environments".
