RUGBY LEAGUE has beaten cricket to the live spot on Channel Nine's schedule next Friday night.
The first-round NRL game between Parramatta and Brisbane will go live into all markets, while viewers who want to keep watching the one-day international between Australia and Sri Lanka live will have to switch to Nine's secondary channel, GEM.
Nine is of the view that when the seasons switch from summer to autumn, and primetime ratings are at stake, league has precedence. It makes even more sense given that Nine recently began talks with the NRL over the next TV rights deal.
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Cricket chiefs have been informed of the decision. The one-dayer can be seen on Nine until it is time for the league to start. Delayed coverage of the remainder of the cricket will be screened on Nine after the league, but in the meantime there will also be the GEM option.
Speculation about how the league TV landscape will look once the new round of deals are done is running wild, but before any other network can get into a position to have a crack at picking up some of the games the NRL is locked into exclusive negotiating periods with the current rights holders.
Nine screens three NRL games per week on free-to-air, and also has the rights to the finals series and State of Origin and other representative football. Fox Sports screens five NRL games per week. The exclusive period began on February 1 and runs for
three months. Television industry experts yesterday told the
Herald to expect new deals to be in place by June or July. The NRL is under pressure from its clubs to get a deal done as soon as possible so they can find out what the flow-on increase to the salary cap will be and make key contract decisions on players.
The existence of several unusual first-and-last bid agreements within the existing rights arrangements has the potential to make negotiations complicated, but, whatever happens, the most likely scenario is that when the deals are done the balance between the number of games on free-to-air and pay will remain the same.
If the balance were to change, it would probably be to a four-four split, with free-to-air picking up a game and pay losing one. The Monday night game currently screened by Fox has always been considered a potential target for free-to-air.
Experts say it remains a genuine possibility the free-to-air coverage could be broken up among multiple networks, but that the chances of that happening will only become known once it is clear how strongly Nine is prepared to bid to keep all of its rights.
Channel Seven has long been interested in seriously competing for some of the rights in this round of negotiations. Channel Ten has also registered an interest, but there are industry doubts about just how strongly Ten would bid for elements of the rights.
We must wait to see whether Ten's new chairman, Lachlan Murdoch, and his chief executive, James Warburton, are serious about proving the doubters wrong.
The ideal maximum number of games for free-to-air, according to experts, is the current three - or, perhaps, four. That is because of the potential for games rated among the lower half of any round as potential attractions to not rate well, and harm the chances of networks covering rights fees with advertising.
Seven will basically want what Nine has got - Friday night and Sunday afternoon games, and, presumably, at least the State of Origin element of the representative schedule as well. But Nine boss David Gyngell has made it clear he will ''fight to the death'' to retain the rights.
If offers made by either Nine or Fox - or both - during the exclusivity period are not accepted by the NRL, the league should be able to seriously consider whatever other offers might be out there.
The X-factor is whether Fox is prepared to offer a lot more than it is paying now for rights. The NRL is expecting it to, and the clubs are determined to see it happen. The league has said if Fox was not prepared to pay full value it risked being frozen out of the new deals.
