Why the NRL is looking for greater exposure instead of top dollar in TV rights strategy
Date: August 26, 2015 - 3:37PM
by Roy Masters
Critics of the ARLC's broadcast dealings would have you believe chief executive Dave Smith has chosen the poorhouse over the countinghouse.
The decision by Smith to accept a $925 million five-year offer from Channel Nine to broadcast four free-to-air NRL games a week, potentially jeopardising more than a billion dollars he could receive from Fox Sports, is designed to project rugby league into as many Australian homes as possible.
While the AFL will receive $2.5 billion over six years, at least five of its weekly games will be shown on Rupert Murdoch's Fox Sports, which reaches only 30 per cent of Australian homes.
Largely unreported in the comparison between the AFL and NRL deals is the significant populations in regional and rural NSW and Queensland.
Channel Nine's four prime-time games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, together with a Sunday afternoon telecast, will go into more than twice as many non-metropolitan homes in the rugby league states of NSW and Queensland than in the equivalent homes in the AFL states of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. There are more than 5 million people living outside Sydney and Brisbane in the two northern states, compared to 2.3 million people living outside the capital cities of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
It is these people in rural NSW and Queensland who made the 2014 NRL grand final the most-watched program Australia wide on TV last year, compared to the AFL decider, which was No.1 on the six capital city count.
It is not the first time rugby league has been forced to decide between money and exposure. John Quayle, when chief executive of the code, recalls receiving a petition with 1 million signatures from league fans in the bush, protesting over the decision to take the ABC's Saturday afternoon telecast of a game in the old Sydney competition and give it to Channel Nine.
"Kerry Packer gave us a million dollars to take the game off Channel Two, telling us that everywhere the Mike Walsh show goes in Australia, Nine will take rugby league," Quayle recalled. "What we didn't know was that Channel Seven had a footprint everywhere we wanted to go, including the country areas and the Northern Territory. We received a petition of 1 million signatures, just from the people of NSW and Queensland, to get the ABC broadcast back.
"We went to Kerry and said, 'You've got to give us Saturday back'. One of the reasons why I had so much loyalty to him in future dealings against Rupert Murdoch during the Super League war was that he agreed Nine give up the game to Channel Two, although he warned us we would not be getting nearly as much money from the ABC."
Packer's decision was supported by Packer's then lieutenant, David Hill, who, ironically later joined Murdoch as boss of Fox Sports in the US. Quayle said, "David Hill told me, 'Always remember your sport should go where the population is'.
"He said, 'The money will never be as good as the exposure'. It was the catalyst for our future regional expansion with teams in Newcastle, Brisbane, Gold Coast and north Queensland."
A few years later, another David Hill the managing director of the ABC - was forced through the public broadcaster's eternal budgetary problems to relinquish rugby league. Quayle says: "The ABC's David Hill told us he wouldn't be paying, so the Saturday afternoon game went off Channel Two again."
Now on the board of the Newcastle Knights, Quayle endorses Smith's decision to take as many free-to-air games as possible to expand the code's reach. His position with the Knights rules him out of joining the ARLC, a possibility promoted, again ironically, in Rupert's News Corp papers. Told that the ARLC constitution forbids anyone who has held a club position in the previous three years joining it, Quayle said, "I'm wiped again," a jocular reference to News rejecting him when the commission was formed in February 2012.
Quayle watched the AFL press conference where Murdoch declared it the superior game. "He hasn't changed his words," Quayle said. "He only changed his code. I wish he had said that 20 years ago when he launched Super League. It would have saved about $700m, including the money [chairman] Ken Arthurson and I had been counting on as the code's future fund."
