Jess JohnsonSeven Network is airing a documentary about Dennis Cometti tonight, 23 September 2026, on the eve of the AFL finals season. The timing is no accident. Cometti — who died on 3 March 2026 aged 76 after several years battling Alzheimer's disease and dementia — was the only network television commentator to have broadcast every AFL season from 1986 until his retirement in 2016. His distinctive voice called approximately 850 matches, made "centimetre perfect" and "cork in the ocean" part of the national vocabulary, and left behind an archive of sports broadcasting that will outlast most of us. What the documentary will almost certainly not cover is what his passing revealed about the estate planning gaps that affect thousands of Australian families every year — and why this is one of the most important conversations the AFL finals season can prompt.
A Broadcasting Career That Created More Than Memories
When Cometti retired from television after the 2016 AFL Grand Final, then made a final appearance calling the 2021 Grand Final on Triple M radio, he left behind more than five decades of work across AFL, Test cricket, and the Olympic Games. According to ABC News reporting in March 2026, he was battling Alzheimer's disease and dementia for several years before his death — a fact that carries its own legal and estate planning implications, as cognitive decline is one of the key triggers that makes documents like enduring powers of attorney not merely useful, but urgent.
A state memorial service was held at Perth Stadium in May 2026, where long-time commentary partner Bruce McAvaney was among the speakers. AFL CEO Andrew Dillon declared that Cometti's "legacy is permanent." But legacy, in the legal sense, is also a document — a will, a beneficiary nomination, a copyright assignment, and a set of decisions made while there was still time to make them.
Tonight's Seven documentary arrives during September, which is simultaneously AFL finals month and, for the nation's estate lawyers and financial advisers, one of the busiest periods for the kind of conversations Cometti's passing can prompt. Fans watching archival footage of his legendary calls may find themselves confronting an unfamiliar question: does my family know what to do when I'm gone?
What Happens to a Lifetime of Broadcast Work?
Dennis Cometti's archives are commercially valuable. His commentary on some of the AFL's most iconic moments — from the 1989 Grand Final to the 2016 farewell season — will appear in broadcast packages, tribute programs, and promotional materials for years to come. Tonight's documentary is itself a product of that archive.
Under Australian copyright law, the duration of copyright in a broadcast recording is typically 70 years from the first broadcast date. This means the earliest of Cometti's recordings could remain protected commercially until the 2050s or beyond. For working media professionals, this raises a question that rarely features in financial planning conversations: who controls the rights to your work after you die, and who benefits from any ongoing licensing?
For most broadcast journalists, commentators, and media personalities, the standard answer is uncomfortable. Employment contracts signed in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s routinely assigned intellectual property rights to the employing network as a condition of work — often without the performer understanding the long-term scope of that assignment. In a world of streaming platforms, archival documentary production, and digital libraries, those assignments are worth more now than they were when they were signed. Estate solicitors across Australia increasingly report that families are surprised to discover that their late relative's professional work generates ongoing revenue they were never told about.
That is the expert lens the Cometti documentary brings into focus: what do you actually own, and does your estate plan account for it?
Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For guidance specific to your situation, consult a qualified legal or financial professional.
The Concrete Case: What an AFL-Era Retiree's Estate Might Face
Consider a realistic scenario for many Australians of Cometti's generation: a 73-year-old professional — call her Margaret — who retired in 2022 after 28 years as a media producer with a major commercial network. She has a superannuation balance of $580,000, a family home in Perth's western suburbs now valued at approximately $1.35 million, and standard employment agreements from the 1990s that assigned certain content rights to the network for the duration of broadcast.
Margaret was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's in 2024. She had an enduring power of attorney prepared in 2018 — before the diagnosis — which gives her adult daughter authority over financial and medical decisions. That document is current and valid. But her superannuation binding death benefit nomination, last renewed in 2021, expired in mid-2024 and was never renewed after the diagnosis made the paperwork feel overwhelming.
Here is what that lapsed nomination means financially. Margaret's super fund now has full trustee discretion over the $580,000 benefit. If the trustee exercises that discretion to distribute the balance to her adult son and daughter equally — as non-tax-dependants under the Australian Taxation Office definition — the taxable component (let's say $440,000 of the $580,000) attracts a death benefit tax of up to 17 per cent, including the Medicare levy.
On $440,000, that amounts to up to $74,800 in tax that a current binding nomination directed to a tax-dependant spouse would have eliminated entirely. According to the Australian Taxation Office's guidance on death benefits from super, a spouse receiving a lump sum death benefit generally pays no tax on any component. The difference between a current nomination and a lapsed one is, in this scenario, the difference between $74,800 lost to tax and nothing lost at all.
This is the practical, numbers-anchored conversation that the passing of figures like Cometti makes necessary — and that the AFL finals season, with its annual wave of tribute packages and "where are they now" retrospectives, consistently prompts Australians to finally have.
Three Estate Planning Actions Worth Taking Before the Grand Final
Australia's estate and financial planning professionals consistently identify the same three oversights in the estates of working and retired professionals — the same oversights that a diagnosis like Alzheimer's, or a sudden death like Cometti's, can transform from a theoretical risk into a family crisis.
Renew your superannuation binding death benefit nomination. In Australia, binding nominations expire every three years. If yours has lapsed — and most Australians don't know when theirs expires — the trustee has discretion over a balance you spent decades accumulating. Reviewing and renewing this nomination takes approximately 15 minutes and requires a form available directly from your fund. The tax implications of not doing it can be substantial.
Establish or update your enduring power of attorney before any cognitive decline. An enduring power of attorney allows a trusted person to act on your behalf in financial and legal matters if you lose capacity. In Western Australia, where Cometti lived, the document is governed by the Guardianship and Administration Act 1990. Once cognitive decline has progressed to the point where a person lacks legal capacity, it is too late to make one — the alternative is a court-administered guardianship process that is slower, more expensive, and less certain. Cometti's public battle with Alzheimer's disease is a reminder that a diagnosis can come earlier than anyone expects.
Audit your intellectual property and employment agreements. Anyone who has spent a career in media, creative industries, technology, or any field where content is created should review what rights they hold — and what rights they assigned to an employer — before those agreements become estate documents by default. IP lawyers in Australia increasingly offer standalone IP estate audits as a service for creative professionals, and the cost is modest against the potential value of overlooked entitlements.
For Australians navigating the intersection of estate law, IP rights, and superannuation planning, the combination of issues is exactly why specialist legal advice matters. Understanding how your particular circumstances interact with Australian law is rarely a job for general online research alone. Experienced estate lawyers can surface obligations and entitlements that even well-prepared families frequently miss — as the experiences documented in similar cases involving NRL and AFL figures have consistently demonstrated.
The Voice That Made Finals Feel Like Finals
Tonight, Australians sitting down to watch Seven's documentary on Dennis Cometti will hear the voice that narrated a generation of football — the precision, the wit, the perfectly placed pause before the call. His colleagues have remembered him as the best in the business. Bruce McAvaney described his career as something that belonged to all Australians.
It did. Which is exactly why the questions his death raises belong to all Australians too. Super nominations expire every three years. Wills written before the smartphone era don't cover digital archives. Powers of attorney that aren't in place before a diagnosis cannot be made after one. The AFL Grand Final will be called by someone new this year. The planning conversation it's worth having is the one Dennis Cometti's documentary quietly prompts — not in the grief of watching it, but in the practical hour after.
