Ch 7's massive court case - how could it impact on RL?

[Copa]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3308134a1864,00.html

This is being billed as a $1 billion court case.

How could this impact upon RL and the NRL? Does anyone know?

 

[Eskimo Sharkie]

It will have a huge financial impact on the likes of News Ltd and Telstra if it is successful. There could be financial repercussions for rugby league but I expect that this is a move by Stokes to make a further foray into Pay-TV and there will be some kind of commercial settlement.

Will be interesting though.

 

[Razor]

If 7 win it'll be a huge benefit to League

Maybe a shortime harm, but in the future with News Ltd already being blasted for blatant bias in awarding pay TV rights for a pitifully small amount to a channel that they part own, they won't risk it again.

So in future bidding processes will be much more fair.

There won't be an out of court settlement. Because 7 will no way accept a deal that doesn't admit the bias, because then they will never win the pay TV rights in the future.

And part of the case also involves giving Seven's sport channels reasonable access to Foxtel. Unlike the totally stupid terms Foxtel were demanding before (Subsription based service for 2 channels - Seven had to pay $1.5mil a year + 50% of all subscriber fees (at a price that 7 set) + 100% of all advertising revenue) - the deal would have been the same even if C7 had won the rights(which was never going to happen)

No way could that deal be accepted, because they could never make any money

On the other hand Foxtel pay Fox Sports $10 per subscriber to Foxtel, with advertising split 50%. (Fox Sports deal with Optus is Optus pay $8 per subscriber, with Fox Sports getting 100% of advertising revenue)

 

[MayMoo]

Anything that means News end up with less control would be good for RL.

 

[morley101]

Does anyone know when News must divest themselves from 50% of the NRL ?

 

[JK]

Are they being forced to divest it? By whom?

I am more interested when they will stop taking the $8million a year out of the game. At least the ARL put it into junior development, etc.

 

[Razor]

I am more interested when they will stop taking the $8million a year out of the game.

They're taking $10 million a year

They will be stopping taking $10 million a year out in 2018, when they will also leave the NRL. But News have the power to take the money out and stay longer for more years if News feel they haven't recovered their investment in full.