It pie in the sky. The NRL has a $2bill 5 year deal cash and contra starting this year
$402 mill a year avg
$130mill ch9 (inc radio rights) (fact)
$32mill SkyNZ (fact)
$240mill Fox (guess based on overall announced amount and vlandys copping a hammering over a sht deal and him justifying it by 'saving them')
Approx $30mill contra. ($24mill last deal plus $5mil more contra from Ch9 though may be more depending on how much of the $12mill skynz uplift is contra)
I'll be proved right when this years annual report comes out next March and you can see the level of cash increase in the licensing line.
It wont likely start to go to negotiations for 2028+ until 2026 going by historic trends of deal negotiation periods. By then we need to have a plan for 20 clubs, ten games a weekend to sell and 2 to 3 bidders going hard for them. Then we will see a major uplift like AFL has seen.
Worse case scenario is NRL rush in team 18 for 2025 so they can renegotiate with Fox who then demand an extension beyond 2028.
3 new clubs and an extra 2 games to run will cost around $65million for NRL. Then the other 17 clubs will be clamoring for more. The next TV deal needs to go up by at least $100mill cash to make it work.
If and when an 18th team is added there will be a revisit on TV rights and costs, Abdo stated such.Whereas ATM the AFL has currently an 18 team competition and that in itself is advantageous.
It does not have a NZ team ,so from an Australian marketing/sales/TV perspective the value for an overseas team is naturally less than for a Oz team.That stands to reason, also when drawing comparisons.
AFL's deal goes from 2025 to 2031 inclusive(7 years) .NRL current deal finishes end 2027 ,4 years earlier than the AFL one.Again not comparing apples with apples.But an opportunity to up the TV deal ante next contract .
Did 10 and Paramount bid on the NRL ? Did ch7 cherry pick wanting only SOO ? 9 was prepared to have AFL games.
There is a 4 year start (2028 )on the AFL, when the NRL next deal kicks in. That opens the door for 10 and Paramount giving competitive tension ,which no doubt the AFL had for their new deal ,and where the NRL in 2020/2021 did not.
IOW we can bang our collective heads together on what we shoulda got ,but drawing comparisons with the AFL is not apples with apples.No 18 teams, no foreign team, representation in 3 states and ACT, and whether we like to admit it or not ,AFL have a lot more high profile sponsors ATM.And finally the contract time factor.
That's my rant .
