Seven Sport previously broadcast tennis (headlined by the Australian Open) and the Olympics & Paralympics for the best part of half a century, exclusively since the early 1970s and Moscow 1980 respectively.

It caused the biggest ever 'shake-up' of Australian television sports broadcasting with widespread media coverage and public discussion at the time.

From 1974 to 1986 Seven was along with the ABC the main broadcaster of the VFL showing replays and highlights of matches played that Saturday.

Nine and Ten entered a joint rights deal with pay TV provider Foxtel to ensure that all eight matches of each round were televised, starting in 2002 and concluding in 2006.

[1] On 5 January 2006, Seven regained the rights to the AFL in the following broadcast deal, covering the period between 2007 and 2011 inclusive, in a joint contract with Ten and Foxtel.

[6] In 2011, it was announced that Seven and Foxtel would share the football broadcast rights from 2012 to 2016, bringing Ten's 10-year run to an end.

For both the WAFL and SANFL, it was the first time since 1987 that each league were broadcast on Seven with all three being on Seven after long association with the ABC ending the previous year.

On June 11 the AFL and the Seven Network extended its current agreement until 2022 for an extra two until the end of 2024 with the deal virtually the same as the original one signed prior to 2017.

[15] The network's coverage of the 2000 Sydney Olympics attracted a TV audience of over 6.5 million Australians for the opening and closing ceremonies.

Seven had exclusive Australian free-to-air, pay television, online and mobile telephony broadcast rights to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Seven broadcast the opening and closing ceremonies and mainstream sports including swimming, athletics, rowing, cycling and gymnastics.

In stark contrast, SBS TV provided complementary coverage focused on long-form events such as soccer, road cycling, volleyball, and table tennis.

From 1963 to 1997, Seven was the home of motor sport in Australia as they broadcast the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) and the Bathurst 1000.

The Seven commentary team included Evan Green, Will Hagon and Geoff Stone (late 60s to the mid 70s).

In 1997, Seven lost the rights to the ATCC to Network Ten, but still broadcast the Australian Super Touring Championship until the series' demise in 2001.

[24] On 13 April 2018, Cricket Australia announced that the Seven Network had acquired free-to-air media rights to a package of events beginning in the 2018–19 season, under a six-year contract as part of a consortium with Foxtel.

Seven West Media CEO James Warburton argued that "there aren't many sports that would launch their season behind a paywall", and that the broadcaster wanted to be "fairly compensated for the value reduction caused by the changes to the schedule and other changes.