Cumberland Throw
First Grade
- Messages
- 6,543
There goes the sunday origin game ..
Register a free account today to become a member of the world's largest Rugby League discussion forum! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
$575m over 5 years, average $115m per year cash, $15m per year contra. Apparently the last deal also averaged $115m per year cash, but only $10m a year contra.
NRL signs new $575m, five-year free-to-air broadcast deal with Nine
By Adam Pengilly
December 20, 2021 — 5.15pm
NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo has pledged the NRL’s record broadcast rights revenue will be spread from grassroots right through to the game’s elite players after signing a five-year extension with Nine Entertainment Co for the free-to-air television rights.
After months of wrangling, Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V’landys and NRL boss Abdo have extended the code’s deal with its long-term broadcast partner into a fourth decade worth $575 million.
Channel 9 has announced a new five-year broadcast deal with rugby league.
Nine Entertainment Co, the publisher of this masthead, will continue to broadcast three matches per round and have exclusive rights to the State of Origin series and grand final. All three Origin matches will be played on Wednesday nights from 2023.
The deal will be for an average of $115 million in cash per year with a further $15 million of contra and other non-cash services to be provided. The terms are similar to the current deal that finishes after the 2022 season, which is worth an average of $115 million per year plus $10 million contra.
Having been forced to help struggling NRL clubs through the COVID-19 pandemic, Abdo said he wants the funds to be spread right across the game at all levels before the NRL starts collective bargaining agreement negotiations with the players’ union.
“Today is a terrific day for our fans,” Abdo told the Herald. “It was important for us to partner with an organisation that can really help us grow the game and really get reach, and Nine with its wide range of assets and platforms is uniquely placed, so we’re very fortunate.
“From a financial perspective, getting certainty for a sport is critical and we now have our major media rights locked in until 2027. That puts us in a position to think about how we can invest to grow and having the most amount of people playing our sport, including touch, tag and tackle for men and women.
“For us to be able to get over $400 million per annum locked up in media rights in the new cycle is the highest the game has ever had.
“We’re always thinking about growth and ways in which we can return even more to our stakeholders, whether making sure the clubs are viable or the right investments into participation. It needs to make it down to grassroots and felt by our community clubs while we make sure our elite players are getting a fair wage.”
Nine Entertainment Co will continue to hold radio and audio broadcast rights through its 2GB and 4BC platforms in Sydney and Brisbane respectively, which will include exclusive rights for the Sunday 4pm games.
The deal was announced to the Australian Stock Exchange on Monday afternoon.
Nine Entertainment Co lobbied for a return to Wednesday night for Origin matches, which saw a stunning growth in streaming numbers through the business’ Nine Now platform.
“The big difference in this deal is five years ago when we signed the last deal we were primarily a television business, now we’re a diversified media business ... this gives us six years of forward-looking runway to be thinking of opportunities to develop the game and how we bring it to our fans,” Nine Entertainment Co chief executive Mike Sneesby said.
“COVID really accelerated the way people behaved in the context of digital and online. We’ve seen that in the ratings numbers across the group, but in particular with NRL and State of Origin.”
V’landys described it as an “exciting day for our fans”, with Nine Entertainment Co claiming it would offer “expanded broadcast, digital offerings and reporting of the NRLW competition”.
“This is more than a broadcast deal, it’s a partnership to grow rugby league using all of Nine’s media platforms – television, radio and print,” V’landys said.
“It was a priority for the commission to secure the long-term future of the game. In doing so, it was important to ensure that a long-term partnership reflected the commission’s desire to grow the game at all levels, to invest in innovation and to ensure we have a partner that can help grow the game from participation to pathway competitions and premierships.”
The NRL’s subscription partner Foxtel brokered a revised and extended deal through to the end of 2027 during the COVID-19 suspension of the competition last year, which will now align with the deals of Nine and Sky Sports New Zealand.
The NRL will introduce a 17th team, the Dolphins, in 2023.
The 17-team competition will feature 12 more regular season matches in total across a 26-round season and more club games during the Origin period with at least one team to have a bye each round.
‘This is a good deal for the NRL ... they should be commended for it’
By Roy Masters
December 20, 2021 — 6.53pm
In March this year, AFL boss Gillon McLachlan told his club chief executives that his code would be receiving $475 million a year from TV income in 2023, while the NRL would be earning $300 million.
His prediction, if correct, would mean the biggest gap in TV revenue between the two codes, given that the past $2 billion-plus deals - when monies from pay TV and free-to-air were announced concurrently - were comparable.
However, 2023 was a convenient year for McLachlan to choose because the NRL did not have a FTA deal in place for that year, while the AFL had completed negotiations on both pay and FTA rights through to 2024.
The NRL did have a pay TV deal for 2023, but the figures were secret. ARLC chair Peter V’landys had negotiated an extension to the broadcast rights through to 2027 with Rupert Murdoch’s Foxtel, but refused to reveal details. He was criticised for signing a deal which presumably included simulcast of all eight games per week on Fox, meaning there was little exclusivity to offer the FTA buyer.
On Monday, however, the NRL announced it had finally secured an FTA deal with Nine Entertainment Co which retains its traditional three-games-per-week coverage plus Wednesday night State of Origins and a telecast of the NRLW competition. We can finally make an apples-with-apples comparison on the total TV packages of both codes.
The NRL’s FTA deal is $650 million, cash and contra, over five years, beginning 2023, at an average of $130 million a year. It includes the recently doubled TV rights income from New Zealand and increases in international broadcast rights.
The total package in 2023, according to NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo, will be “over $400 million”, meaning V’Landys’ secret pay TV deal with Foxtel is worth approximately $300 million a year. That is consistent with the general formula that pay TV deals are generally twice those of FTA TV.
Maybe McLachlan was one of the few who knew what V’landys had negotiated from Foxtel when he cited $300 million as the NRL’s total TV income in 2023. If so, he was being convenient with his accounting.
Based on his revelation about the AFL’s numbers in 2023, the NRL is less than $75m a year behind the AFL.
Considering the NRL has eight games a week to telecast and the AFL nine, on a per-club basis, the difference is minimal, even allowing for a 17th team in the NRL (the Dolphins) in 2023: $475 million divided by 18 equals $26.4 million per club, compared to the NRL’s $400 million divided by 17 clubs, which equals $23.5 million.
Furthermore, the NRL now has security of TV income (about two thirds of its total revenue) through to 2027, while the AFL deals with Foxtel and Channel Seven conclude in 2024.
However, on this point, Australia’s leading sports and media advisor Colin Smith predicts AFL monies will rise. “While TV income to sport across the globe is being challenged, the monies for the premium sports in a country will continue to grow,” he said. “AFL and NRL are must-have sports for broadcast rights in Australia because they drive fans to watch it on TV.”
Smith cited the recent NFL deal in the US, which doubled its rights to $13 billion a year without competition.
However, he conceded the NRL had done well, especially after two seasons where games were subject to blow-outs and a clear gap emerged between the haves and have-nots.
“This is a good deal for the NRL,” Smith said. “They should be commended for it.”
Smith also points out that AFL games are longer with more opportunities for commercial breaks and therefore advertising revenue.
“Another tribal team in Brisbane will help the NRL with ratings,” he said of the Queensland viewing audience which is extremely parochial in the teams it watches.
Nine confirmed it will be able to stream games on 9Now, a popular medium with millenials who demand the ability to access sport anytime, anywhere. Younger viewers will therefore be able to watch Nine games on mobile phones, computers and tablets.
A Nine press release said, “After securing the biggest ever BVOD audience in Australia for the 2021 grand final, 9Now will continue to be the premium destination for live streaming and catch up viewing...”
Nine also gains exclusivity of radio rights of NRL games through its Sydney stations 2GB and Brisbane’s 4BC. Abdo insists his deal making was never exclusively about money, claiming he sought consistency of promotion nationally.
Nine’s ownership of newspapers (the Herald and The Age), a national TV network and the premier radio stations should allow this, but there will be resistance in Melbourne, the home of AFL.
After all, long-term leaguies in the Victorian capital recall when the film The Man with Two Brains was being screened on Nine in Melbourne at the same time the rest of eastern Australia was watching the Storm.
We got $ 2m+ last deal?
Im sarcastically replying to PR post claiming it was on par.
Well according to the reports last time we got $1.9bill. This time we got $2bill. So $20mill extra a year of which we know at least $5mill is extra contra, and who knows how much of the sky nz and fox deals may be extra contra? So a $15mill cash max increase. And for that we gave away telstra coverage to it’s customers, added an extra 12 games content a year, gave new ltd what they wanted re streaming, gave news ltd what they wanted in terms of expansion club, gave news ltd what they wanted in terms of closing down part of the digital arm and have to put up with 5 more years of sht tv covg from a “partner” that slagged the game off no end 18 months ago.
i think hes having a go at PR moaning as per usual claiming we didn't get any more when quite obviously we have
whaaaaa
