For anyone interested here it is.
Inside the NRL’s high-stakes gamble for its next television rights deal
Networks must decide whether they can afford the NRL’s ambitious multi-billion dollar broadcast rights demand or risk losing Australia’s top-rating sport entirely, writes ADAM PENGILLY.
Adam Pengilly
2 min read
April 18, 2026 - 7:00PM
NRL: The Fox League panel review a series of high tackle decisions from recent weeks and discuss whether there is consistency in how they are being ruled by the NRL.
This week, the NRL finally fired the starting gun for cash-challenged broadcasters to pass the tin around and lodge their best offer for what we’re told is the No.1 television sport in Australia right now.
It’s a formal invitation for the likes of Fox Sports, Nine, Seven, Ten, Amazon and more to tell the league what they’d be willing to pay for each timeslot of NRL from 2028. Be it Thursday night to Monday, it might be the most significant sign of a good old-fashioned rugby league carve up.
Not the carve up’s we’re seeing multiple times a week on the field right now, but a hint of how the NRL will maximise its most important cheque. That could mean following the lead of other global leagues, such as the NFL, and splitting its rights across three or more broadcasters.
Granted, the NRL has morphed into a commercial beast under the leadership of Peter V’landys and Andrew Abdo.
The NRL might not have ever been in a healthier place to go to market, but there may have never been a worst time for the market, bleeding money due to soft advertising conditions and television executives fretting over Anthony Albanese’s imminent gambling promotion crackdown?
PVL and Abdo have the AFL’s TV deal in their sights. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images
Make no mistake, V’landys wants to usurp the AFL’s $4.5 billion, seven-year deal signed under former chief executive Gillon McLachlan.
A forecast of a $4 billion, five-year gamechanger is bold rhetoric, and V’landys has been privately counselled that type of money might simply not exist, and even a small uplift will be a great result. It’s unlikely to slow him down though.
Can the networks really afford to pay that? Or can the networks simply afford to not have the NRL?
That might sound like posturing from inside the corridors of the NRL, but it will be a key consideration for the DAZN-owned Fox, whose business plan has largely been built around having every match of every NRL round live, and Nine, who will be desperate to maintain a stranglehold on State of Origin and the grand final, and increase their footprint on the subscription service Stan.
Nine’s current outlay of $115 million per season barely washes its face.
The NRL’s one big bargaining chip might be the fact that most domestic sporting rights are locked away for years, making them hot property.
Is over refereeing hurting the NRL’s value? Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
The AFL (2031), cricket (2031), tennis (2029) and the Olympic Games (2032) won’t be up for grabs any time soon, meaning the NRL is the last top tier sporting deal to be done for years.
More people are watching the game than ever before, but the six-again malarkey has taken it down a dangerously quick, and potentially unsustainable, path in the opening months of 2026.
No one wants the return of the wrestle, but did we want this?
The revolt of club bosses this week wanting urgent answers from head office speaks to much of the frustration with the current on-field product, over which referees have never had greater and more mysterious influence.
And we haven’t even got to the final rounds of the season when exhausted players and out-of-contention teams usually maximise blowouts?
Cowboys winger Braidon Burns being pinged for a brilliant one-on-one tackle on Tom Trbojevic early in the game on Thursday night was everything wrong with the interpretation as he tried to wriggle free from underneath the Manly No.1.
There’s still time to correct it. And it might just lead to the tin being full when passed around.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/s...ws-story/6577591d4c71ec2c685cc8a06a3c9d8b?amp
Proven quality content Feb through October every year and four of the top 5 rating programs ?
