Next TV deal is the only chance for NRL
It will get worse before it gets better. While administrators bemoan the poker machine tax and clubs play to near empty stadiums, the reality is a shoddy television deal is the reason Rugby League is in a hole. A deal which is locked in for another four years. Television was the reason the game went to war.
But television is Rugby League’s only chance of salvation.
Now before we look at the extraordinary conflict of interest that resides with the part-owners of a competition selling its television product to a company it also part-owns, we need to look at how the product is sold and ask why the most dominant sport across more than half the nation’s population is being lapped by Australian Rules when it comes to TV money.
and Fox Sports held onto the rights last time they were up for grabs. No problem there, except for the fact they’re the only companies that wanted the rights. Why would those organisations pay premium dollars for rights in which they had no serious competition?
The issue is structure.
The NRL has two products: A free-to-air deal and a pay-TV deal. Free-to-air involves three games a weekend, four weeks of finals, three Origins, as well as any other rep games played on Australian soil. Quite the juicy package. Lucrative too. However Seven and Ten are locked into long-term commitments with AFL. No chance either could commit to the costs and production demands of three games per weekend.
No competition.
In pay-tv world, Fox Sports almost has a monopoly on sport in Australia, although not quite. ESPN and the newly added Setanta Sports are in the market, but neither could dream of producing up to five matches each weekend.
No competition, again.
This is a problem. Anyone who did Commerce in Year 9 at high school could tell you the way to maximum the value of a product is to maximise the demand.
So how do we get those other potential players in the ring?
Change the structure.
The worldwide masters of maximising television money are the NFL and the English Premier League. How do they do it? They break down their product into bite-size packages. In America, Fox has a heavy portion of one conference on a Sunday afternoon, CBS the other, while NBC has Sunday Night Football and ESPN runs Monday Night Football. That’s not even including the NFL’s own network. All putting their finest production teams on deck – giving pre and post match analysis, guaranteeing further exposure for the code - all paying mega dollars. Why? Because each package was in high demand.
England runs on a similar line. Sky Sports dominates, but they had to shell out the big bucks in the last deal to keep their heavy schedule in tact.
Think of it this way: Seven has AFL on Friday’s and Sunday’s, but outside of the occasional V8 weekend, no major sport on Saturday’s. Why wouldn’t they want a piece of, say, a stand alone Saturday night game?
Instead of the second game we currently have on a Friday Night, let’s move it to Sunday Night. Imagine the feeding frenzy with all three free-to-air networks and the pay-tv providers in play for that prime time special.
Monday Night Football is now locked into the Rugby League landscape. There’s another one-off game that can be sold off auction-style.
State Of Origin can be a separate package. Finals can be split into a couple of packages.
You get the picture.
Perhaps Nine and Fox Sports would remain the sole rights holders. Fans wouldn’t be too fussed, given they do a good job as it is.
But at least under this format we’d know they had paid the true market value.
AFL is constantly seen as the trendsetting code in this country, but that sport was in a similar predicament to League less than a decade ago. Clubs weren’t far short off going to the wall until Ten, Nine and Foxtel jumped into bed together and served up $100million a season. The next AFL TV deal was more than 50% larger.
Television set AFL free.
Then again, AFL wasn’t partially owned by a company that had its fingers in a television network. Can the NRL break free from itself, or will it cannibalise?
Forget poker machines, club memberships or stadium deals. The next television deal is going to make or break the NRL.
It’s going to be a long four years.
Here’s a potential list of packages:
Friday Night Football
Sunday Football
Potential suitors: Nine, Ten.
Saturday 5:30
Saturday 7:30
Potential suitors: Fox Sports, ESPN.
Saturday Night Football (one off 7:30 game)
Potential suitors: Nine, Seven. Fox Sports, ESPN, Setanta Sports.
Sunday 2:00
Potential suitors: Ten. Fox Sports, ESPN, Setanta Sports.
Sunday Night Football
Potential suitors: Nine, Seven, Ten. Fox Sports, ESPN, Setanta Sports.
Monday Night Football
Potential suitors: Nine, Seven, Ten. Fox Sports, ESPN, Setanta Sports.
* Schedule determined on a rotational basis. Friday Night Football rights holder always has first priority, however the priority for the remainder of the weekend is rotated between the rights holders (i.e. Week 1: Saturday Night Football rights holders get pick two. Week 2: Sunday Night Football gets pick two, etc).
2 x week one finals
1 x week two finals
1 x week three finals
Grand Final
Potential suitors: Nine, Seven, Ten
2 x week one finals
1 x week two finals
1 x week three finals
Potential suitors: Nine, Seven, Ten. Fox Sports, ESPN, Setanta Sports.
3 x Origin games
Potential suitors: Nine, Seven, Ten.
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“Why would those organisations pay premium dollars for rights in which they had no serious competition?”
Well they do! The NRL’s deal with Nine and Fox Sports is worth $500 million, not to mention the cash Fox pays directly to each club. If you want to consider the financial situation of the NRL then the $10 million a year News Ltd draws from NRL coffers to repay its “investment” in the code - money spent on the Super League war should be looked into.
If you do like we said the NRL could turn out to be like the MLS. ESPN has the exclusive rights to 1 Thursday night game. Fox Soccer Channel and HDnet has 1 Saturday game, and a TeleFutura (Spanish only station) has a exclusive Sunday game. An addition game can be access if you have a local team which will air on a local tv which could be either FTA or Pay tv station. Most of the channel you have to pay extra for and are not available by all operators. You can subscribe to a package called direct kick to access addition games fro $79 for a session but again is only available by selected operators, but all up how screwed is that, and you want to be like the American system.
Look at the EPL we get better coverage here than they do in England maybe the sport will make more money but it is through screwing the fans out of pocket.
The English Super League they only shows 2 or 3 games per week compared to the NRL all of them, look at the current position we are currently at and think who is this to benefit peoples pockets or the fans of the game