Dave Smith has lunch with the men he said no to - including Rupert Murdoch
A day after getting right up the nose of Rupert Murdoch, NRL boss Dave Smith ended up having lunch with him.
Oh to have been a fly on the wall at posh Rose Bay restaurant Catalina on Tuesday afternoon when Smith joined the 84-year-old News Corp supremo and about 100 other heavy hitters.
Also in the room were Murdoch's son, Lachlan, and Fox Sports boss Patrick Delaney, who was said to be furious with Smith about the stunning $925 million broadcast deal between Channel Nine and the NRL announced on Monday morning.
Murdoch snr's not-so-secret soiree for News executives, key advertisers and media buyers had been organised well in advance of the Nine deal. But the timing of the lunch could not have been more intriguing.
Uncle Rupert arrived in Sydney on Monday to learn of the NRL's deal with Nine, which now places News' Fox Sports in an invidious position as it will now have to "pay through the nose" to ensure all eight league matches are broadcast live on the network from 2018.
"No, Dave wasn't the most popular person in the room," revealed one source who was present. "But they were all very professional."
Smith's counterparts from the other major codes – David Gallop from FFA, Gillon McLachlan from the AFL and Bill Pulver of the ARU – were also in attendance, no doubt shaking their heads in disbelief at Smith's stunning coup with Nine boss David Gyngell.
There was some speculation floating around that Nine's deal had been turbo-charged by Souths co-owner James Packer, whose late father Kerry knew better than anyone about the gold to be found in live sport.
Gyngell and Packer famously fell out a year ago, brawling before stunned onlookers at Bondi, but they have recently patched things up. Both Gyngell and Packer's representatives scoffed at the suggestion.
There is also much finger pointing happening at News Corp's Holt Street bunker, with most of them directed at former chief executive Kim Williams, who relinquished the media company's "first and last rights" to the NRL until 2027 when the last broadcast deal was struck.
He was being branded by some within News on Tuesday as "the man who just lost us rugby league".