CODE Sports

What is CODE Sports?

CODE Sports is a sports title published by News Corp Australia at codesports.com.au, launched as a standalone website and app. At its launch on 15 November 2021 it was described as a premium sports vertical carrying a subscription priced at 8.99 Australian dollars a month, headed by the sports reporter Alex Brown, with the tennis player Ash Barty, the cricketer Steve Smith and the basketball player Patty Mills announced as contributors.^[1]

A News Corp Australia campaign release dated 15 June 2026 described CODE Sports as "Australia's biggest sports newsroom"; that phrase is the publisher's description of its own title and is reported here as such rather than adopted.^[2] The title sits alongside News Corp Australia's mastheads and its general news site, which the same network reporting treats as separate audiences.^[3]

What does CODE Sports cover?

The title's published output combines written sports coverage with regular video and audio programmes. The June 2026 release names a weekly AFL programme on Wednesdays and a weekly NRL programme on Thursdays, distributed through the CODE Sports site and through YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts, which places the two football codes with the largest Australian broadcast-rights agreements at the centre of the schedule.^[2] The same release describes a reader-submission campaign, "I Call BS", inviting fans to send in opinions for use on the platform.^[2]

The title's editorial identity was set at launch around named contributors as well as reporters: the launch announcement gave the tennis player Ash Barty, the cricketer Steve Smith and the basketball player Patty Mills as ambassadors and regular contributors, and named Alex Brown, previously of Fox Sports, News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media, ESPN and the San Francisco Examiner, as the journalist heading it.^[1] Neither the launch coverage nor the June 2026 release sets out the size of the newsroom, and no staff figure for the title could be retrieved.

Those two codes are also where Australian rights money is concentrated: SportsIndustryAU's record of Australian media rights deals lists the AFL agreement for 2025 to 2031 at a reported 4.5 billion Australian dollars and the National Rugby League agreement then in force at a reported total above 400 million Australian dollars a year, which is the commercial environment a subscription sports title reports on.^[5]

How large is CODE Sports's audience?

The figure News Corp Australia publishes for the title is a single month's reading. Its campaign release of 15 June 2026 states, citing the Ipsos iris rankings for April 2026, that more than 1.1 million sports fans turned to the site in April.^[2] That figure is the publisher's citation of a measurement service rather than a figure retrieved from the service itself.

For context on both the network and the category: Mediaweek reported on 24 April 2026 that News Corp Australia recorded an Ipsos iris reach of 80.4 per cent of online Australians in March 2026 and a unique audience of 18.15 million, with news.com.au at 12.11 million and 388 million browser page views, and that CODE Sports and SuperCoach both posted double-digit engagement growth without separate figures being given.^[3] Ipsos iris measured 13.3 million Australians, or 59 per cent of the online population aged 14 and over, visiting a sports website or app in February 2026, and Mediaweek reported 14.1 million in June 2026.^[4][6]

Since when has CODE Sports existed?

News Corp Australia launched CODE Sports on 15 November 2021.^[1] That is a launch date for a title created from new rather than a renaming or acquisition of an existing masthead, and no earlier predecessor publication is claimed for it in the launch coverage.^[1]

The title was still publishing and marketing itself in June 2026, when the campaign release describing its weekly AFL and NRL programmes was issued.^[2] Its parent, News Corp Australia, was reporting network audience figures for the same period.^[3]

Why does CODE Sports matter in Australia's sport?

Australian sports coverage is split between broadcasters who hold rights and publishers who do not. CODE Sports sits in the second group: a subscription title reporting on competitions whose pictures are controlled by others, in a market where the AFL's rights sit with the Seven Network, Foxtel and Telstra to 2031 and the National Rugby League's with Nine and the Foxtel Group to 2034.^[5]

The measured scale of that reading audience is documented for the category as a whole rather than for any one title: Ipsos iris recorded 13.3 million Australians using sports websites or apps in February 2026 and 14.1 million in June 2026, at an average of 56.6 minutes a day in the later month.^[4][6] Within it, News Corp Australia's own citation of Ipsos iris puts CODE Sports above one million users in April 2026.^[2]