This is clearly bad news for league. NRL cannot afford to not have the money coming in. Its budgeted for. Plus any partnership is bad when they are fighting as telstra and the nrl are.
I have some legal knowledge. Nowhere near enough to give proper comment on this. And also would need to see the contract between them. But if telstra has agreed to pay nrl money for the naming rights, then they should be paying. Nothing has affected the naming rights. The only problem is in the internet, mobile media rights. So in effect they are breaking a legal contract to pay so much per year for the rights to have telstra branding over the NRL premiership.
In terms of the internet, telephony rights. Its a bit more grey. But at a basic level they should still be paying the NRL as the NRL is supporting them in their legal battle with foxsports and the NRL has done nothing wrong in terms of the internet deal. Telstra's battle is with foxsports who is on-selling footage to 3, optus and vodafone and also showing 2mins worth of footage on its website within 24hrs of the match. Something that telstra claims they paid to the NRL so they could have the exclusive rights.
The only thing i see as a reason for them not paying NRL is that they could claim the NRL is not doing enough to protect this exclusivity clause that telstra wants. But still what more can they do, they have joined telstra in the legal action against fox but can only wait till the matter is heard in the future.
