And their NBA games are getting about 1% of the population watching. NHL and MLB less. Would you be happy with 270k watching NRL games on FTA?
The country with 340 million people had 700k watching their nationally televised NHL game on a Sunday night. Oversaturation has a clear and obvious impact.
We already have mid-week Thursday night games that average 600-700k this year. By what logic would you think that Monday night would only average 270k?
An individual NBA game might get 1% watching - ESPN gets about 2 million a game. But games are also targeted to specific markets. Across a whole season, about 90 million unique Americans - about a quarter of the population - will have watched the NBA. You need to keep in mind not everybody loves sports, let alone the NBA. So I don't think they're doing as bad as what you think.
The NBA makes about $7 billion USD annually on its broadcast deals which started last year. Per capita it's roughly about $20 USD per person - these are just rough figures going forward.
At the moment the NRL is on $400 million AUD annually - about $282 million USD - 4% of the NBA deal for a country with 7.7% of the population size. Per capita it's about $14 AUD per person.
That said the USA is simply a big TV market so broadcast deals gets inflation from that fact alone.
But the NRL's deal was signed in 2021. The NBA deal was signed in 2024 and runs to 2036.
If the NRL's new deal is worth $540,000,000 USD a year - about $763 million AUD, then it will match the NBA's deal per capita.
If it's less than 9 years, then there'll be another renegotiation before the NBA renegotiates and it could go higher again.
The AFL's current deal is $643,000,000 AUD ($454 million USD) through to 2031. That's about $23.80 AUD per capita or $16.84 USD - which sits it behind the NBA.
For comparison, the NFL's deal is $10 billion a season through to 2033 - $28.57 USD per capita. To match that, AFL & NRL need to get about $772 million USD annually from their broadcast deals - about $1 billion AUD a season.