Rugby union's eternal boast of its worldwide popularity has paid off for Australia, rescuing the code here from insolvency and pouring enough money into their coffers for a likely stratospheric offer to Rabbitohs star Greg Inglis.
A content war in Britain between pay TV giants BSkyB and BT has forced a massive price increase in what BSkyB must pay for SANZAR matches.
Income from SANZAR broadcasting is pooled and shared among the partners, with Australia expected to receive an additional $15.5 million a year, a 52 per cent increase to $45m a year.
The deal is being "papered", as they say in the industry, with the ARU poised to announce in the next few weeks the unexpected groundbreaking major uplift in its SANZAR broadcast rights from 2016 to 2020.
The four-times increase in money Britain will pay to watch SANZAR matches is far greater than forecast by the ARU internally, or leading sports media rights externally.
ARU chief executive Bill Pulver recently hinted the forthcoming deal would rescue his administration from insolvency but did not reveal the source of the unexpected bonanza, nor the possibility some of it could be used to lure Inglis.
The funding fillip is the result of a battle to the death for British subscribers between BSkyB and BT.
Last week, they finally agreed to share the rights to English Premier League soccer, resulting in a 70 per cent increase in broadcasting income to EPL.
Each seeks to become the quad play leader across British TV, broadband, landline and mobile phone where all four services are packaged to consumers.
It has major ramifications for the NRL and AFL in Australia, with Foxtel keen to follow this strategy, using Australia's two most popular football codes as "battering rams", a description once used by Rupert Murdoch.
It is understood Fox Sports has not significantly increased its payment for SANZAR games, given the poor and falling Australian TV ratings of Super Rugby and the plateauing of viewer numbers for the Wallabies.
The average audiences on Fox Sports for Super Rugby is 99,000 for games played only in Australia and 60,000 for all Super Rugby games. The average TV audiences for NRL and AFL, also on Fox Sports, are three times greater.
However, the NRL and AFL's income from overseas viewers is minimal and initiatives by rugby league bosses in Britain and Australia to stage the World Club Series is a laudable attempt to widen the market.
A likely new entrant in the British pay TV market, Discovery Channel - owner of Eurosport - is guaranteed to further drive competition.
The ARU's share of SANZAR broadcasting income has also been enhanced by a proportion of revenue from the sale of the TV rights to South Africa and New Zealand's domestic competitions being pooled.
Forrner ARU boss John O'Neill was furious that South Africa was able to sell its rights to its Currie Cup competition independently and before the SANZAR rights were negotiated, as New Zealand did with its ITM Cup.
These games were sold at disproportionately higher prices than their audiences justified, but the new relationship is more equitable to Australia.
The SANZAR pool has also received an increase in rights values from New Zealand, as a result of competitive tension from the start up of online streamed broadcaster Coliseum.
Coliseum, which has acquired the New Zealand broadcasting rights to EPL and European rugby, has challenged Sky NZ, the current SANZAR broadcaster.
In NZ, unlike Australia, the leading sports are broadcast only on the Sky NZ pay TV platform because there is no free-to-air TV protection mechanism, similar to Australia's anti-siphoning regulations, which ensures Wallabies games must be broadcast on FTA TV.
Sky NZ is an independent publicly listed NZ media company, one of the most profitable in the world, mainly because of its exclusive ownership of all NZ rugby broadcast rights.
South Africa has also increased its contribution to the SANZAR pool via the country's leading pay TV broadcaster Super-Sport. Rugby broadcasts in South Africa are very popular with average audiences in excess of 650,000, six times greater than Australian TV audiences for Super Rugby games.
The falling Australian dollar has also been a bonanza. SANZAR broadcast rights deals are sold in US dollars, meaning the devaluation of the Australian dollar has resulted already in a 16 per cent increase in the rights values for the ARU.
The new SANZAR broadcasting deal will mean all Wallabies games will be broadcast live on Channel Ten and Fox Sports. Super Rugby games, both in Australia and overseas, will be broadcast live on Fox Sports with one Australian game a week being broadcast delayed on Ten.
