When ARLC chairman John Grant and his chief executive Dave Smith strode confidently into Catalina restaurant in Rose Bay on August 11, their hosts were shocked they would have the gall to appear.
The pair had accepted an invitation to attend a lunch as part of a VIP gathering where News Corporation boss, Rupert Murdoch, would speak.
Yet earlier the previous day, as Murdoch's jet touched down in Sydney, an ARLC press release announced a $925m five year deal for Channel Nine to broadcast four NRL games per week plus State of Origin from 2018.
It blindsided almost everyone, including Fox Sports boss Patrick Delany, who had not received the customary phone call warning him his free-to-air partner in the existing NRL rights deal had effectively divorced him.
Murdoch's executives were furious their 100 per cent owned pay TV company had been frozen out, with one half jokingly suggesting the seating plan at the restaurant be reconfigured to place Grant and Smith adjacent to the restaurant's "shit house door."
It was the second time the Murdochs had been shunned.
Rupert's son, Lachlan, when boss of Channel Ten, was confident he would secure the 2013-17 NRL free-to-air rights but was beaten by the Nine/Fox Sports consortium which paid $1.025 billion in last minute furious negotiations where News Limited was forced to surrender its first and last rights hold over the game, effective to 2027.
It was a costly loss for News who had spent over a billion dollars fighting a three-year Super League war to win the first and last rights to 2022 and had them extended to 2027 as a condition of its exit from the NRL when the ARLC was formed under Grant.
It helped cost News Ltd's then chief executive, Kim Williams, his job but, ironically, he has re-appeared as an AFL commissioner where he was publicly thanked by AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan for his role in negotiating Tuesday's announced $2.508 billion six-year broadcasting deal with News Corporation, Seven West Media and Telstra.
Enmities are put aside in business and rugby league when the parties re-enter the same tent, as we found when Wayne Bennett convinced Lachlan he should return to coach the Broncos, despite the master coach's oft expressed view he was "off" with News.
Ditto a smiling Seven Media boss Kerry Stokes, who bitterly challenged News Ltd in court over its alleged role in the closure of C7, yet joined with Rupert at Tuesday's AFL press conference.
The ARLC will be hoping the next two years will see a similar tempering of relations with News Corporation in order to sell the remaining four NRL games per week to Fox Sports for a fee which brings the total value of the 2018-22 rights to $2 billion.
It is unlikely it will reach the AFL's $2.508 billion, even allowing for the fact this deal is for six years, not five and the AFL has an additional game - nine compared to the NRL's eight - to sell.
Murdoch's executives were so embittered over being blindsided by the Nine/NRL deal, they resolved to do a joint free-to-air/pay TV AFL deal, with Foxtel paying an amount which more than doubles the $625m they currently pay.
The total rights deal is an amount they calculate Grant and Smith cannot equal.
This was reflected at Tuesday's press conference where Murdoch senior said "we have always preferred Aussie Rules", despite fighting a war to half own rugby league and maintaining its 67 per cent control of the NRL's premier club, the Brisbane Broncos.
It is likely News Corporation's Australian mastheads, particularly Brisbane's Courier Mail, will join an aggressive push to promote AFL, with chief executive Robert Thomson, repeating his vow at Tuesday's AFL press conference to "see its (AFL's) reach extended particularly in NSW and Queensland."
Hell hath no fury like a media mogul scorned, with the ARLC blindside tackle gifting the code's main rival $500m.
Nevertheless, the ARL commissioners are confident Fox Sports will be forced to do a deal, even though the courteous Delany is no longer talking to them.
Fox Sports needs NSW and Queensland to maintain its subscription base and faces massive churn if it loses NRL.
Newcastle and the Hunter Valley entrenched rugby league territory - are equal in population to Adelaide and Perth combined.
The ARLC is determined to reach more households via its expanded free-to-air cover of four games a week, while the AFL is headed in the opposite direction with 3.5 of its nine games on Seven.
Smith also has a further two years to do a deal, while the AFL had to get theirs finalised, with the existing contract concluding at the end of 2016.
Media technology is developing rapidly and there are alternatives if Fox Sports does not take up an offer of eight live NRL games per week, with four simulcast with Nine.
Furthermore, the ARLC is committed to controlling its own games schedule and will seek a subscription partnership which guarantees this.
And Smith knows that wherever people watch sport, in their loungeroom, a crowded bar, a mobile phone or a tablet, he has a game to sell which confines all the action to a box shaped screen.
