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Foxtel slams TV rip-off claim

Walt Flanigan

Referee
Messages
20,727
What a stupid thing to claim that the contract is based on potential growth.

So it's no value to Fox to retain current subscribers?

If the NRL was to become exclusively FTA than foxtel would be in deep sh*t. How many people get foxtel just for Rugby League? Quite alot I would think.
 

In-goal

Bench
Messages
3,523
Look to put it simply for the NRL to gain a larger slice of the TV revenue they must restructure.

i.e.
Offer 1 network the rights to all 8 NRL fixtures week in week out, this will put pressure on the likes of FOX and 9 to come good with renewed vigour. Unfortunatley alot of the posts I have read so far are inward looking and lack the bussiness sense that is needed to forsee future growth.

Setanta sport is a reletivley new network in Australia and are desperate to gain more subscribers, however they will not grow until they secure rights to one of the main stream sports in the country (watch this space).

RL is in desperate need of expansion before the next rights are settled the competition must be expanded to 18 franchises and the Salary cap need to be raised to around AU$6 Million, otherwise the game will stagnate much like it is doing at the moment.

The NRL have a responsibilty to RL not just the competition itself, they need to grow the game regardless of the upfront coast. Failure to follow these steps will see RL fall into a comfortable second in the hearts and minds of all Australians with the potential of Football/Soccer it maybe worse.
 

Brutus

Referee
Messages
26,461
another dopey quote :

"Nevertheless, the value of the pay TV rights for AFL and NRL are roughly the same

1. RL has more games on Fox than AFL.
2. RL games are live and exclusive, AFL games are also on FTA.
3. RL gets around 500,000 more viewers each week than AFL on Pay TV.

Spot on Dally.

I'm starting to get the feeling that if the NRL rated 10 times more than AFL on both FTA and Pay TV it wouldn't make a scrap of difference when it comes to contracts. It's like the AFL is born to get more and that's it.
 
Messages
21,880
What a stupid thing to claim that the contract is based on potential growth.

So it's no value to Fox to retain current subscribers?

If the NRL was to become exclusively FTA than foxtel would be in deep sh*t. How many people get foxtel just for Rugby League? Quite alot I would think.

spot on.

Foxtel dont seem to give a sh*t about current subscribers. You only have to look at their customer service record for evidence of that.
 

Brutus

Referee
Messages
26,461
Exactly, outside of Victoria every single game involving any team from the home state is shown on FTA regardless of whether its on Foxtel or not. So there is no reason for any AFL fan to get Foxtel outside of Victoria as they can watch all 22 games of their own teams live anyway, so the growth in these states would be nothing.

That's what I can't work out. The AFL will never give a large chunk of exclusive games to Fox, yet they are getting a bigger Pay TV deal.

Yet we have the NRL who ensure no FTA games are shown on Saturday, they even reduce radio coverage as to get people to watch Pay TV. We still, after all this, get much less than the AFL who have no intention of reducing their FTA content and making it totally exclusive to Fox.
 

LeagueXIII

First Grade
Messages
5,969
It's pure business by News to keep costs low that is why we have no expansion. They purely want thei money back from the SL war and to hook everyone in to watch pay TV. When looking at Gallops decisions take these into account and you will see he and News have been dudding us for yers. Or was I the only one who thought the last TV rights deal which was one i a week was odd as against the AFL's deal wich took a year to work out? Now we wonder why we are dudded. It will happen again unless we all stop buying Foxtel, lose 10,000 subscriptions and watch them squirm.
 

nqboy

First Grade
Messages
8,914
How many people get foxtel just for Rugby League?
Me for one. Worth a poll by itself.

Unfortunately, ESPN and Setanta are still on Pay so we wouldn't cancel our subscriptions. Though I'm getting closer, fed up with News Ltd raping our game.
 
Last edited:

Digga Hole

Juniors
Messages
340
Why are you all acting so shocked, I gave you this exact explanation days ago?

This is exactly why the AFL is looking to the GC and WS and not Tasmania.

Unfortunately Tasmanians already follow the game and therefore provide no growth. You have to go after areas where plenty of people aren't inerested in your product with the plan to change the minds of some.

No one says its fair, I would love to see a Tasmanian AFL side, but it is the way the world works, and not amount of "lying merkin" posts on here are going to change that.

Rather than take the easy "add another Qld team, oh and the CC" option you need to start seriously looking at Perth and Adelaide again, and continue to grow the game in Melboure (FTA before 4:30am would help).
 

In-goal

Bench
Messages
3,523
to put it in another posters words on another forum, for those that don't understand bussiness.

It's not as simple as that. It's an investment decision.

If you had 2 sports - Sport A & Sport B - and you thought that Sport A was already at 90% of it's potential viewing capacity, and Sport B was at 50% but had the potential to be as big as Sport A, then the logical investment is in Sport B. You already have the Sport A viewers, so to grow your business you need to attract those additional Sport B viewers.

If both sports had potential viewing figures of 2m people then Sport A already has 1.8m viewers. Sport B has 1m viewers.

So, do you invest to get the 200k viewers for Sport A, or the 1m viewers for Sport B ?
 
Messages
10,970
Spot on Dally.

I'm starting to get the feeling that if the NRL rated 10 times more than AFL on both FTA and Pay TV it wouldn't make a scrap of difference when it comes to contracts. It's like the AFL is born to get more and that's it.

AFL is owned independantly of news ltd hence their ability to get market value for the product.
 
Messages
17,613
The whole argument about new subscribers is a crock and an insult to RL. No where in this wankers argument does it recognise the lost revenue to pay TV if it didn't have the rights. How many would unsubscribe and return their Foxtel boxes? They will twist the numbers anyway they can to justify their actions. The problem here is lack of competition in PayTV. If there were others wanting RL they would have to bid much more to secure the rights.
 
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