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Fans are in for a confusing time as they try to digest the significance of the NRL free-to-air television deal in comparison with the massive $2.5-billion contract signed by the AFL.
News Corporation, in its guise as Fox Sports, was snubbed by the NRL and in turn was front and centre in the AFL announcement with Rupert Murdoch himself breaking convention – and travel plans – to attend the media conference.
Rightly or wrongly, readers will be suspicious of the coverage that News provides on the issue. They’ll also be suspicious of the coverage everyone else provides, suspecting a motivation to sink the boot into old Uncle Rupe.
Here’s what I think.
I suspect someone, somewhere, has been paid an extremely large consultancy fee – hundreds of thousands of dollars – to advise the NRL of the likely changes in the digital realm over the next two years.
And that person – whoever he or she may be – has advised David Smith to hold fire because big opportunities are about to arise. Google has been mentioned but there seem to be half a dozen possibilities out there.
Smith would have seen the signing of a $925 million as keeping the wolves from the door – the wolves being recalcitrant clubs who want him to get them some money, like, yesterday.
But hell hath no fury like a media mogul scorned. It isn’t outrageous to imagine a degree of vengeances in the size of the deal done between News and the AFL (which is for one year longer than the NRL contract with Nine).
Murdoch’s lieutenants would be aware of the rebellious nature of NRL clubs and that the dramatic AFL announcement would further stir the rabble. They know it will put more pressure on Smith and his chairman, John Grant, which serves the purposes of them and of the AFL.
It was more than six months into Smith’s tenure at the NRL before I met him. I was in no hurry to do so, to be honest.
But when I got the opportunity to have a proper conversation with him, on a plane from Townsville to Sydney, I shared one of my core opinions about rugby league everywhere – we need more people running the game who don’t care if they have a job tomorrow.
We need more people who make decisions for the sport, not for themselves.
I later heard on the grapevine he had gone back to League Central and repeated the little mantra to anyone who would listen.
Not for a minute am I suggesting he would even remember that conversation now, let alone follow the theme. But it appears to me it is happening anyway – with the TV rights negotiations and with things like the shoulder charge.
I want leaders who do what they think is right and damn the consequences, who are willing to exit with head held high rather than stick around and play politics.
The $925 million is almost what the entire previous deal was worth, without pay television and digital thrown in.
No, I am not comfortable that Nine can now re-sell games to other broadcasters. That arrangement did not work in radio, where 2GB did not broadcast games to which they had rights and prevented others from doing so.
But it’s a lot of money with a big hand still to play. If the NRL gets back control of its draw, moves an Origin to weekends, locks in pre-season and post-season schedules with certainty and still gets less than the AFL, I am comfortable with that as a rugby league fan.
And the NRL has two years to capitalise on new platforms and opportunities in the online area. Sadly, if my mysterious consultant exists he or she gets paid regardless of whether he or she has led the competition up the garden path.
So if you’re trying to sift through the rhetoric and emotion and figure out if the NRL has done a good broadcast deal, the answer is this: it hasn’t done one yet, not completely.
As hard as this is to digest, it’s too early to judge Smith and the NRL just yet.