People who make business decisions based on a reactive emotion usually end up suffering for it.
That's not to say it can't happen but as for as an offer from Fox that low balls the NRL, like I said well really that just helps the NRL get more time to negotiate with other parties. It's in Fox's best interest to get this sorted asap but the NRL can afford to wait.
So people keep saying what's the alternative? Telstra's saying they don't want to play the sports rights game any more. Others claims Netflix, Google etc aren't ready or don't want it. The thing is $$$ are what count.
The problem for the NRL is that the early costs for setting up their own service to rival Fox's subscription platform is quite expensive and again you have ongoing problems. It's a lot of work. There's also no guarantees that you'll market it correctly and/or that viewers will migrate to the net platform.
Whereas if you get a third party to do it, yes you get a lower % share but the risk is lower. Believe me, this new organisation is all about Cost Benefit Analysis.
So say Fox aren't coming to the table straight up with a quality deal -- what the NRL can do is offer to these new players - yeah you might not want to/be able to match Fox's offer for the rights, but if you pay a certain % upfront you'll have NRL content available for your service.
That will help boost your traffic and subscription base and you also inflict a massive wound on your main competitor (Fox). Remember SMIs.
So essentially the NRL is piggybacking off an existing service and there's lower start up costs (most of these are paid for by the other company). The NRL rights are offered as a premium service package for extra $. The carrier keeps the smaller % of those annuals fees (remember they're benefiting from the overall subscriber boost & paid less upfront) and the NRL keeps the majority of the subscription fees. If it's a carrier that already has hundreds of thousands of existing subscribers, the NRL aren't starting their base from scratch.
Then what they do is make an agreement with ISP rival(s) to Telstra (Optus etc) so that those companies offer both the carrier & NRL as part of their network & potentially make them unmetered services. So now you have NRL+Carrier+Rival ISPs vs Fox & Telstra. They could even go one step further and say to other sports -- ditch Fox and join the new system.
Already before all this Telstra have started to question their sports pull out strategy. It's based on the premise that they can offer all the streaming services in one bundle. If those carriers go to rival ISPs, their strategy is dogmeat. They start pushing Fox Sports to concede.
And Fox Sports end up paying what they probably should've paid up front or the NRL leaves them behind and migrates to the system.
Remember -- none of that has to happen. It's just the threat of that.
