Question on Peter V'landys

[Desert Qlder]

AFL faces cash crunch as big TV rights deal in limbo

AFL boss Gillon McLachlan faces a deepening drama if the league fails to strike a revised deal with broadcasters Channel 7 and Foxtel before the season restarts. And as the networks push for a payment cut due to COVID-19, the game’s finances could be hit hard .

The AFL is in danger of restarting its season without a TV rights deal in a deepening drama for league boss Gillon McLachlan.

Failure to strike a revised agreement with broadcasters Channel 7 and Foxtel before next Thursday night’s Collingwood-Richmond MCG clash will leave the game’s finances in a precarious position.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” an insider told the Herald Sun on Thursday night.

The networks are pushing for a reduction of about $150 million on their 2020 payments because the season has been compromised by the COVID-19 crisis.

The size of the TV shortfall will be crucial in determining cash distributions to all 18 clubs, the extent of staffing culls across the industry and pay for players.

It can also be revealed discounted payments for 2021 and 2022 are being sought by both broadcast partners.

The prospect of a two-year extension for seasons 2023 and 2024 also remains unclear.

“The various parties are nowhere near a deal on that,” the insider said. “The game has changed in the media world and peak sports rights are five years ago, really.”

Reports on Monday that Seven and Foxtel had withheld payments to the AFL were incorrect.

The league received a full payment last December and again in mid-March, meaning broadcasters have forked out two instalments for a single round of football.

The next payment is due in July. An AFL commission subcommittee, including McLachlan, former News Corp boss Kim Williams, Paul Bassat and Robyn Bishop, is leading the league’s negotiations.

Seven this week announced it was dumping its Monday night and Sunday morning footy review programs because of savage costs cuts, while Fox Footy and Kayo subscribers have been lost during the season shutdown.

Broadcasters are also concerned they have no clarity on the AFL fixture beyond Round 5, while a decision has not been made on what date or time of day the Grand Final will be played.

Rival code NRL, which relaunched its season last weekend, has already locked away an extended new TV rights deal.

Before the coronavirus, the AFL pocketed an average of $417 million a year in TV rights as part of a six-year, $2.5 billion deal with Seven, Foxtel and Telstra that expires at the end of 2022.

Google, Facebook and Amazon are not considered serious players in the race for the AFL’s broadcast rights.

Club chiefs are bracing for cuts in TV revenues of 15 to 20 per cent.

Hawthorn president and ex-Seven board member Jeff Kennett said last night: “It’s essential that we get a good price because if there is a reduction, every dollar it is reduced by will impact on the code — not only this year but will have a flow on effect next year — because of the borrowings that the AFL will have to undertake.”

RMIT sports marketing expert Con Stavros last month said the league’s media rights would take a hit in the post-COVID world, declaring the free-to-air networks were “not the money-making machines they once were”. Broadcast money accounts for about 62 per cent of the AFL competition’s total revenues.

CURRENT SIX-YEAR AFL TV RIGHTS DEAL
FOXTEL $1.3b

CHANNEL7 $900m (includes $60m contra)

TELSTRA $300m

TOTAL $2.5b

AVERAGE ANNUAL PAYMENT
FOXTEL $217m

CHANNEL 7 $140m (plus $10m contra)

TELSTRA $50m

TOTAL $417m

REVISED 2020 DEAL
WORST CASE 50 per cent payment — $208.5m total, $108.5m from Fox, $70m (plus $5m contra) from Seven, $25m from Telstra

TOTAL LOSS $208.5m

BEST CASE 75 per cent payment — $313m total, $163m from Fox, $105m from Seven (plus $7.5m contra), Telstra $37.5m

TOTAL LOSS $104m

https://www.couriermail.com.au/spor...o/news-story/1c7a9912eadf5bad063177a4def71c31

 

[Canard]

AFL faces cash crunch as big TV rights deal in limbo

AFL boss Gillon McLachlan faces a deepening drama if the league fails to strike a revised deal with broadcasters Channel 7 and Foxtel before the season restarts. And as the networks push for a payment cut due to COVID-19, the game’s finances could be hit hard .

The AFL is in danger of restarting its season without a TV rights deal in a deepening drama for league boss Gillon McLachlan.

Failure to strike a revised agreement with broadcasters Channel 7 and Foxtel before next Thursday night’s Collingwood-Richmond MCG clash will leave the game’s finances in a precarious position.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” an insider told the Herald Sun on Thursday night.

The networks are pushing for a reduction of about $150 million on their 2020 payments because the season has been compromised by the COVID-19 crisis.

The size of the TV shortfall will be crucial in determining cash distributions to all 18 clubs, the extent of staffing culls across the industry and pay for players.

It can also be revealed discounted payments for 2021 and 2022 are being sought by both broadcast partners.

The prospect of a two-year extension for seasons 2023 and 2024 also remains unclear.

“The various parties are nowhere near a deal on that,” the insider said. “The game has changed in the media world and peak sports rights are five years ago, really.”

Reports on Monday that Seven and Foxtel had withheld payments to the AFL were incorrect.

The league received a full payment last December and again in mid-March, meaning broadcasters have forked out two instalments for a single round of football.

The next payment is due in July. An AFL commission subcommittee, including McLachlan, former News Corp boss Kim Williams, Paul Bassat and Robyn Bishop, is leading the league’s negotiations.

Seven this week announced it was dumping its Monday night and Sunday morning footy review programs because of savage costs cuts, while Fox Footy and Kayo subscribers have been lost during the season shutdown.

Broadcasters are also concerned they have no clarity on the AFL fixture beyond Round 5, while a decision has not been made on what date or time of day the Grand Final will be played.

Rival code NRL, which relaunched its season last weekend, has already locked away an extended new TV rights deal.

Before the coronavirus, the AFL pocketed an average of $417 million a year in TV rights as part of a six-year, $2.5 billion deal with Seven, Foxtel and Telstra that expires at the end of 2022.

Google, Facebook and Amazon are not considered serious players in the race for the AFL’s broadcast rights.

Club chiefs are bracing for cuts in TV revenues of 15 to 20 per cent.

Hawthorn president and ex-Seven board member Jeff Kennett said last night: “It’s essential that we get a good price because if there is a reduction, every dollar it is reduced by will impact on the code — not only this year but will have a flow on effect next year — because of the borrowings that the AFL will have to undertake.”

RMIT sports marketing expert Con Stavros last month said the league’s media rights would take a hit in the post-COVID world, declaring the free-to-air networks were “not the money-making machines they once were”. Broadcast money accounts for about 62 per cent of the AFL competition’s total revenues.

CURRENT SIX-YEAR AFL TV RIGHTS DEAL
FOXTEL $1.3b

CHANNEL7 $900m (includes $60m contra)

TELSTRA $300m

TOTAL $2.5b

AVERAGE ANNUAL PAYMENT
FOXTEL $217m

CHANNEL 7 $140m (plus $10m contra)

TELSTRA $50m

TOTAL $417m

REVISED 2020 DEAL
WORST CASE 50 per cent payment — $208.5m total, $108.5m from Fox, $70m (plus $5m contra) from Seven, $25m from Telstra

TOTAL LOSS $208.5m

BEST CASE 75 per cent payment — $313m total, $163m from Fox, $105m from Seven (plus $7.5m contra), Telstra $37.5m

TOTAL LOSS $104m

https://www.couriermail.com.au/spor...o/news-story/1c7a9912eadf5bad063177a4def71c31

Quiet, strong, decisive....

 

[TheRam]

Thanks for the vote of support

I think he s done a great job getting NRL back, he rolled the dice and the game won.
Its good that he is still talking about bringing Brisbane2 in (though with him I do get a suspicion he is appealing to the masses more than reality but time will tell. He knows how to play the crowd ( look at his press relases since he started; suburban grounds, tribalism, dissing AFL, poo pooing expansion into AFL states, Brisbane2 etc)) so its hard to know if he is just playing the crowd for popularity or if that is what he genuinely thinks should happen. Again its the way it was done. NRL was in the middle of a expansion review project, talking to potential expansion areas and backers and he comes out and puts out a comment that Brisbane2 should be next and Perth is a waste of time. Burning all sorts of bridges and progress being made in WA in the process.
Why not wait for the review to be completed and to do it properly? Its not what he does, its how he does it that is my issue. Hie is autocratic and that can be very costly for a company, especially one as complex as the NRL.

The one ref I've been calling for for years, good to see it finally happen though the way it happened was very poorly managed. Six again too early to tell, first round signs are good.

The TV deal, hmmm devil will be in the detail. The way I am reading it at the moment is the NRL is potentially down $75mill a year but I might be wrong, we shall see.

Well you may not like his style, which of course is your prerogative and that's fine, but I for one love it. I like his in your face combative nature. I have always stated that what the NRL needs is a benevolent dictator. This running everything by consensus and committee is a joke. It has gotten us nowhere other then politically correct clap trap decisions or indecisions forever. Sporting organisations need powerful, decisive and aspirational leaders. Not politicians and nest builders.

Look at the AFL's golden years of recreation. They had Andrew "Vlad The Impaler" Demetriou. He was the best thing that could of happened at the time for that sport. Well I think it is finally our turn to have a man of similar attributes that knows what he wants the game to look like and the skill set to get it there. Should he have waited for the expansion review to have come out first? Yeah sure probably, but that obviously isn't his style. He knew what he wanted and the reviews findings whatever they were, were irrelevant to him. Remember...dictator.

Do I agree with his "no Perth decision" ? No I don't, but maybe he has a different plan then the obvious when it comes to the non traditional States eventually getting a team. Who knows? But I am sure that those areas eventual inclusion will be revisited sometime down the road, but I suspect that he at the moment he has more pressing issues to sort out closer to home in steadying the ship and then building it into a first class Destroyer.

Maybe then when he/we are in a position of strength, he will(or whoever else is in charge by then) enter those arenas with a greater acceptance and enthusiasm then would otherwise greet us now. But unfortunately for fans like yourself it is cold comfort having to wait for God knows how much longer? What I do know for sure though is that he is a doer and a action man. So I think the game will look a little different by the time he has hung up his gloves. Will we like all his plans, decisions or accomplishments, probably not, but jeez he already has a great success strike rate and is moving ahead with even more almost impossible to do tasks as we speak, that if he even half achieves will be a great outcome for the game.

A lot of what he tries to do will need to have the media on his side to help him get there otherwise a network of negative press will make his more ambitious endeavours like Stadiums near impossible. Look at the article in the Herald today as an example with a very emotive headline which reads - "V'landys versus Berejiklian in Stadium Showdown". Now this, in my opinion, useless journalist professes to love RL and yet he writes an article that can only make the State Premier look weak and capitulating to the greedy NRL Supremo. Not to mention negatively influence the soft as porridge collective minds of the States populous. This is not the writings of a man who loves the game, but a click chaser.

As for the one ref decision being handled badly, I don't really care, but does it matter when the end result is a much more appealing game at the end of it? Remember he is a Autocratic Dictator. They just do things and get on with it. The six again has been exactly what the game has needed for a very long time. In the last couple of seasons I had stopped watching all the games like I used to because they were just to freakin slow and long. Thank God this man so decisively and without years of testing and counter testing in the lower grades over the next year or five just said "do it" and it happened. Now I watch all games again and they just zip past without that tedious boring stop/start, stop/start, take a settler, take another settler, block play, block play, spread it wide and finally kick/bomb it. Now it just goes and goes and goes....

As for the TV rights? Time will tell us all what has gone on there and whether he has done well or failed to maximise the codes monetary value. But for me so far so good. Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain my friend. I think we are in good hands.

This is the link to the article I referred to above for the moderators to be happy and in case anyone wants to read this negative crap. https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/v-...lian-in-stadium-showdown-20200604-p54zkb.html

 

[colly]

AFL faces cash crunch as big TV rights deal in limbo

AFL boss Gillon McLachlan faces a deepening drama if the league fails to strike a revised deal with broadcasters Channel 7 and Foxtel before the season restarts. And as the networks push for a payment cut due to COVID-19, the game’s finances could be hit hard .

The AFL is in danger of restarting its season without a TV rights deal in a deepening drama for league boss Gillon McLachlan.

Failure to strike a revised agreement with broadcasters Channel 7 and Foxtel before next Thursday night’s Collingwood-Richmond MCG clash will leave the game’s finances in a precarious position.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” an insider told the Herald Sun on Thursday night.

The networks are pushing for a reduction of about $150 million on their 2020 payments because the season has been compromised by the COVID-19 crisis.

The size of the TV shortfall will be crucial in determining cash distributions to all 18 clubs, the extent of staffing culls across the industry and pay for players.

It can also be revealed discounted payments for 2021 and 2022 are being sought by both broadcast partners.

The prospect of a two-year extension for seasons 2023 and 2024 also remains unclear.

“The various parties are nowhere near a deal on that,” the insider said. “The game has changed in the media world and peak sports rights are five years ago, really.”

Reports on Monday that Seven and Foxtel had withheld payments to the AFL were incorrect.

The league received a full payment last December and again in mid-March, meaning broadcasters have forked out two instalments for a single round of football.

The next payment is due in July. An AFL commission subcommittee, including McLachlan, former News Corp boss Kim Williams, Paul Bassat and Robyn Bishop, is leading the league’s negotiations.

Seven this week announced it was dumping its Monday night and Sunday morning footy review programs because of savage costs cuts, while Fox Footy and Kayo subscribers have been lost during the season shutdown.

Broadcasters are also concerned they have no clarity on the AFL fixture beyond Round 5, while a decision has not been made on what date or time of day the Grand Final will be played.

Rival code NRL, which relaunched its season last weekend, has already locked away an extended new TV rights deal.

Before the coronavirus, the AFL pocketed an average of $417 million a year in TV rights as part of a six-year, $2.5 billion deal with Seven, Foxtel and Telstra that expires at the end of 2022.

Google, Facebook and Amazon are not considered serious players in the race for the AFL’s broadcast rights.

Club chiefs are bracing for cuts in TV revenues of 15 to 20 per cent.

Hawthorn president and ex-Seven board member Jeff Kennett said last night: “It’s essential that we get a good price because if there is a reduction, every dollar it is reduced by will impact on the code — not only this year but will have a flow on effect next year — because of the borrowings that the AFL will have to undertake.”

RMIT sports marketing expert Con Stavros last month said the league’s media rights would take a hit in the post-COVID world, declaring the free-to-air networks were “not the money-making machines they once were”. Broadcast money accounts for about 62 per cent of the AFL competition’s total revenues.

CURRENT SIX-YEAR AFL TV RIGHTS DEAL
FOXTEL $1.3b

CHANNEL7 $900m (includes $60m contra)

TELSTRA $300m

TOTAL $2.5b

AVERAGE ANNUAL PAYMENT
FOXTEL $217m

CHANNEL 7 $140m (plus $10m contra)

TELSTRA $50m

TOTAL $417m

REVISED 2020 DEAL
WORST CASE 50 per cent payment — $208.5m total, $108.5m from Fox, $70m (plus $5m contra) from Seven, $25m from Telstra

TOTAL LOSS $208.5m

BEST CASE 75 per cent payment — $313m total, $163m from Fox, $105m from Seven (plus $7.5m contra), Telstra $37.5m

TOTAL LOSS $104m

https://www.couriermail.com.au/spor...o/news-story/1c7a9912eadf5bad063177a4def71c31

This is hard to take but i will point out several things. First I suspected that Telstra did make a irect cash injection into the AFL 6 year media deal of 300 m. While Telstra lumped their money into the Foxtel deal for the NRL deal, of say 100m. The good news mobile streaming ( including CASTING up to your TV ) is ours to sell who we like with no restrictions >>>>FACT.
Anyway Telstra are ready to stab US in the back.
https://ministryofsport.com.au/tels...e-to-brand-due-to-nrl-off-season-court-hears/
https://www.ausleisure.com.au/news/...-season-incidents-have-ruined-telstras-brand/

So now they streaming rights (which we did not get paid directly and 1/3 of which the AFL got, so I say in 2022 see you latter.

Also for naming rights Contract Nathon Lion which beer brands include Tootheys New and 4 XXXX


The beauty of the NRL having these beer baron as Competition Naming rights sponsor is - their product usually causes the scandals- so what have they got to complain about. In fact make a world -wide show covering sports scandals , o course the NRL should play a lead role. If you cant beat them embrace it.
Now the figures AFL don't get 417m per year or 2.5 billion. They get 2.3 billion over 6, Six years NOT FIVE. Contra of 200 m incl 60 CH 7 so 140 m to foxtel.

It follows the NRL tying up a five-year $950m deal with the Nine Network last week. There is “around $200m of contra” included in the deal according to AFL CEO Gill McLachlan, who said “the AFL’s challenge is to stay Australia’s game”.

The rights should also see matches made available on Telstra’s new streaming service Telstra TV from 2018.

https://mumbrella.com.au/foxtel-and-seven-telstra-tie-up-afl-rights-in-2-5bn-deal-313048

 

[Perth Red]

Always said Telstra gets a cracking deal from NRL. Naming rights worth over $10mill a year and free streaming for which NRL gets nothing. All the talk of Telstra paying $100mill for it turns out that money goes to Fox not the NRL! I'm guessing Fox must have it bundled in the deal it is has with NRL as an on sell in same way can on sell the Saturday night and simucast rights. In the mean time turns out Telstra is paying the AFL $50mill a year without naming rights!

"The good news mobile streaming ( including CASTING up to your TV ) is ours to sell who we like with no restrictions >>>>FACT."

This isnt FACT, its your interpretation of a journalists interpretation of no official comment lol. All we know is from 2023 Telstra will no longer have simucast streaming rights. Now if that has been done as part of the Fox deal (which logically I very much suspect it has to give KAYO exclusive streaming rights to all games) or for NRL to then on sell to someone else (and in doing so create major competition for Fox so highly unlikely Fox would have agreed to it) is unknown.

 

[colly]

dddd

Always said Telstra gets a cracking deal from NRL. Naming rights worth over $10mill a year and free streaming for which NRL gets nothing. All the talk of Telstra paying $100mill for it turns out that money goes to Fox not the NRL! I'm guessing Fox must have it bundled in the deal it is has with NRL as an on sell in same way can on sell the Saturday night and simucast rights. In the mean time turns out Telstra is paying the AFL $50mill a year without naming rights!

"The good news mobile streaming ( including CASTING up to your TV ) is ours to sell who we like with no restrictions >>>>FACT."

This isnt FACT, its your interpretation of a journalists interpretation of no official comment lol. All we know is from 2023 Telstra will no longer have simucast streaming rights. Now if that has been done as part of the Fox deal (which logically I very much suspect it has to give KAYO exclusive streaming rights to all games) or for NRL to then on sell to someone else (and in doing so create major competition for Fox so highly unlikely Fox would have agreed to it) is unknown.

I will stand by my "interpretation". NRL own the streaming. So you will see streaming up to 'casting' to the TV besides Kayto.

 

[TheRam]

Why it makes sense for union and league to merge
Rugby Australia should be congratulated for its initiative in changing the rules for its upcoming domestic competitions. It is proposing a 50/22 rule to reward creative kicking, goal-line dropouts when an attacking player is held up or a defender grounds the ball in-goal, and sin-binning as an alternative to the tick-paralysis of red cards.

Hang on…

Over in England, Eddie Jones is praising the NRL's new six-again rule and saying union should adopt similar changes to speed up the game. There is talk of cutting the number of replacements to four and reducing the number of players on the field to thirteen.

Wait, what?

Once they fix the scrums – which is what everyone, from new RA chairman Hamish McLennan down, wants – they will have a much more entertaining product.

It will be called rugby league.

Just played by people with better grammar.

The time to acknowledge reality can't be too far away now. The hard business heads steadily moving onto the boards of Australia's two rugby codes cannot be unaware of the bleeding obvious. If you had two very similar businesses with the synergies of rugby union and rugby league, in the real world the takeover would already have happened.

During COVID, with the sports pages essentially becoming a version of the business pages, the two-codes problem has become a bit of an elephant in the room. On the one hand, you have an extremely attractive entertainment product with powerful bonds of loyalty between the public and the teams. This business has as secure a long-term income as is possible in these times. What it lacks in international presence it makes up for in the game's appeal to young players across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. It offers them a career. Audiences have decided that this is the code they prefer to watch.

On the other hand, you have a failing entertainment product with fading loyalty everywhere but at local, school and community level, and among "legacy" (ie old) audiences. It has virtually no income. Its best-case scenario is a drastically reduced future broadcast deal, reflecting its struggles to compete with the superior code in a small market that has really run out of room for a number-two. It does have one great advantage over the other, which is its international links, but this is fast becoming a liability for Australian fans, who have grown weary of the privilege of seeing their team get flogged in all the world's great stadia. It has a small but strong junior layer, which is cultivating excellent players who will eventually go to rugby league.
I am not necessarily making a case for rugby league to take over rugby union. I am saying that the logic will become so powerful in coming years that when the takeover or merger happens, it will seem so inevitable that people will be asking why it took so long.

It goes without saying, for the business heads, that the back office synergies make a merger a no-brainer. League and union have both laboured under top-heavy central administrations, and now that they are both in a corporate weight-loss version of The Biggest Loser, there is only advantage to be gained in combining back office functions between the codes.

But what of the cultural differences? Aren't league and union just too…different? At the elite level, these are fabrications of the past. The last Wallabies coach, Michael Cheika, now works for the Sydney Roosters. Eddie Jones, the most innovative union coach in the world, gets all his best ideas from rugby league (as did, once upon a time, Alan Jones). On the field, outside backs are not only fully interchangeable at the top level – do Sonny Bill Williams, Ben Te'o, Marike Koroibete, (gasp) Israel Folau and the rest need any adjustment period nowadays when toggling between codes? – they are also interchangeable right down into junior elites, who code-hop their way through adolescence until they find the best deal as adults.

The protest from union will be that the game has always been a harbour for "all body types". If you are built like a giraffe or a tortoise, union has a place for you, whereas league's body types tend to congregate around a narrower height and weight band. This remains true to some degree, but in the junior and senior elites, the influence of Pacific Islander players has narrowed the spectrum so that the best young footballers are equally adapted to union or league. And the giraffes have already gone off to play for their school basketball team.

At social and schools level, union will still exist. The small community of union lovers will keep their clubs alive, and will prosper inside their local bubble. But in a professional sporting ecology, it has become obvious to everyone outside the codes that Australia cannot afford two duplicates of what, to those much longed-for new audiences, look suspiciously like the same thing. (Victorians have never stopped calling them both ‘rugby'.) The differences remain important to knowledgeable fans, but economic forces are whittling those differences away before our very eyes.

If professional union gets eaten by league, true, Australia's participation in the international spectacle will be jeopardised. But internationally, the fastest-growing rugby code is neither union nor league; it is sevens. Sevens, both men's and women's, represents the international future, but in our country it is now imperilled by Rugby Australia's financial position. When there is a league-union merger, however, this creates a great opportunity for sevens, which is the most amorphous hybrid game of all, and would easily accommodate players from both codes. If the NRL took over rugby and Australia were able to send a male squad to the Olympic Games including James Tedesco, Tom and Jake Trbojevic, David Fifita, Tyson Frizell, Damien Cook, Josh Addo-Carr, Latrell Mitchell, Koroibete, Jordan Petaia, Michael Hooper and Lewis Holland, who's going to be complaining when they knock over Fiji and New Zealand to bring home the gold medal from Tokyo?

If we're honest and unsentimental, we all know it makes sense. Union has had a strategy of placing all its bets on the Wallabies succeeding, and using that success as a magnet for fans and players. The strategy has clearly failed. As former Wallaby Brett Papworth put it succinctly, there was a lot of forest harvesting going on, but someone forgot to keep planting the trees. As a code, rugby will have to return to planting trees and begin growing from the ground up again. Trees take time. A true professional revival of the code is a generation away. In the meantime, the best young union talent will be snared by league, and others will dribble away to Japan and Europe. South Africa will go off and be part of Europe, while New Zealand will own the southern hemisphere. It's a sad prospect for Australian professionals, but the code will eventually have to let go of its pride and accept the advances of a white knight.

Now, if only rugby league had a daring, innovative, aggressive leader who was prepared to make a bold move…

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/why-it-makes-sense-for-union-and-league-to-merge-20200605-p54zv9.html

 

[hineyrulz]

Teddyboy just blew a triple roper.

 

[Styles clash]

Why it makes sense for union and league to merge
Rugby Australia should be congratulated for its initiative in changing the rules for its upcoming domestic competitions. It is proposing a 50/22 rule to reward creative kicking, goal-line dropouts when an attacking player is held up or a defender grounds the ball in-goal, and sin-binning as an alternative to the tick-paralysis of red cards.

Hang on…

Over in England, Eddie Jones is praising the NRL's new six-again rule and saying union should adopt similar changes to speed up the game. There is talk of cutting the number of replacements to four and reducing the number of players on the field to thirteen.

Wait, what?

Once they fix the scrums – which is what everyone, from new RA chairman Hamish McLennan down, wants – they will have a much more entertaining product.

It will be called rugby league.

Just played by people with better grammar.

The time to acknowledge reality can't be too far away now. The hard business heads steadily moving onto the boards of Australia's two rugby codes cannot be unaware of the bleeding obvious. If you had two very similar businesses with the synergies of rugby union and rugby league, in the real world the takeover would already have happened.

During COVID, with the sports pages essentially becoming a version of the business pages, the two-codes problem has become a bit of an elephant in the room. On the one hand, you have an extremely attractive entertainment product with powerful bonds of loyalty between the public and the teams. This business has as secure a long-term income as is possible in these times. What it lacks in international presence it makes up for in the game's appeal to young players across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. It offers them a career. Audiences have decided that this is the code they prefer to watch.

On the other hand, you have a failing entertainment product with fading loyalty everywhere but at local, school and community level, and among "legacy" (ie old) audiences. It has virtually no income. Its best-case scenario is a drastically reduced future broadcast deal, reflecting its struggles to compete with the superior code in a small market that has really run out of room for a number-two. It does have one great advantage over the other, which is its international links, but this is fast becoming a liability for Australian fans, who have grown weary of the privilege of seeing their team get flogged in all the world's great stadia. It has a small but strong junior layer, which is cultivating excellent players who will eventually go to rugby league.
I am not necessarily making a case for rugby league to take over rugby union. I am saying that the logic will become so powerful in coming years that when the takeover or merger happens, it will seem so inevitable that people will be asking why it took so long.

It goes without saying, for the business heads, that the back office synergies make a merger a no-brainer. League and union have both laboured under top-heavy central administrations, and now that they are both in a corporate weight-loss version of The Biggest Loser, there is only advantage to be gained in combining back office functions between the codes.

But what of the cultural differences? Aren't league and union just too…different? At the elite level, these are fabrications of the past. The last Wallabies coach, Michael Cheika, now works for the Sydney Roosters. Eddie Jones, the most innovative union coach in the world, gets all his best ideas from rugby league (as did, once upon a time, Alan Jones). On the field, outside backs are not only fully interchangeable at the top level – do Sonny Bill Williams, Ben Te'o, Marike Koroibete, (gasp) Israel Folau and the rest need any adjustment period nowadays when toggling between codes? – they are also interchangeable right down into junior elites, who code-hop their way through adolescence until they find the best deal as adults.

The protest from union will be that the game has always been a harbour for "all body types". If you are built like a giraffe or a tortoise, union has a place for you, whereas league's body types tend to congregate around a narrower height and weight band. This remains true to some degree, but in the junior and senior elites, the influence of Pacific Islander players has narrowed the spectrum so that the best young footballers are equally adapted to union or league. And the giraffes have already gone off to play for their school basketball team.

At social and schools level, union will still exist. The small community of union lovers will keep their clubs alive, and will prosper inside their local bubble. But in a professional sporting ecology, it has become obvious to everyone outside the codes that Australia cannot afford two duplicates of what, to those much longed-for new audiences, look suspiciously like the same thing. (Victorians have never stopped calling them both ‘rugby'.) The differences remain important to knowledgeable fans, but economic forces are whittling those differences away before our very eyes.

If professional union gets eaten by league, true, Australia's participation in the international spectacle will be jeopardised. But internationally, the fastest-growing rugby code is neither union nor league; it is sevens. Sevens, both men's and women's, represents the international future, but in our country it is now imperilled by Rugby Australia's financial position. When there is a league-union merger, however, this creates a great opportunity for sevens, which is the most amorphous hybrid game of all, and would easily accommodate players from both codes. If the NRL took over rugby and Australia were able to send a male squad to the Olympic Games including James Tedesco, Tom and Jake Trbojevic, David Fifita, Tyson Frizell, Damien Cook, Josh Addo-Carr, Latrell Mitchell, Koroibete, Jordan Petaia, Michael Hooper and Lewis Holland, who's going to be complaining when they knock over Fiji and New Zealand to bring home the gold medal from Tokyo?

If we're honest and unsentimental, we all know it makes sense. Union has had a strategy of placing all its bets on the Wallabies succeeding, and using that success as a magnet for fans and players. The strategy has clearly failed. As former Wallaby Brett Papworth put it succinctly, there was a lot of forest harvesting going on, but someone forgot to keep planting the trees. As a code, rugby will have to return to planting trees and begin growing from the ground up again. Trees take time. A true professional revival of the code is a generation away. In the meantime, the best young union talent will be snared by league, and others will dribble away to Japan and Europe. South Africa will go off and be part of Europe, while New Zealand will own the southern hemisphere. It's a sad prospect for Australian professionals, but the code will eventually have to let go of its pride and accept the advances of a white knight.

Now, if only rugby league had a daring, innovative, aggressive leader who was prepared to make a bold move…

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/why-it-makes-sense-for-union-and-league-to-merge-20200605-p54zv9.html

Expected a link to The Roar at the bottom.

 

[Perth Red]

Makes sense for nrl to take over australian rugby union, sadly in rest of world union is much bigger than league (png excepted)

 

[LeagueXIII]

Can’t imagine they’ll let the Titans fall over. They need to find on field success. Simple in theory but the reality is the people have demonstrated in the psst they’ll turn up when they win. I do wonder how things would have worked out if Cherry-Evans didn’t backflip.

What about they relocate them, Brisbane Titans. I hope not, but you never know.

 

[Dark Corner]

I was watching the 1996 battle of the codes on Sky a few weeks back and Wigan could of easy but a ton on Bath in League rules but in Union rules Bath were lucky with 2 tries ( one being a penalty) and that Gary Connolly try was not a forward pass.

 

[siv]

Can you elaborate on what Politis promised about the CC Bears?

It was part Norths deal to join as Easts feeder club

That Easts would go into bat for their return into the NRL

 

[Suitman]

I was watching the 1996 battle of the codes on Sky a few weeks back and Wigan could of easy but a ton on Bath in League rules but in Union rules Bath were lucky with 2 tries ( one being a penalty) and that Gary Connolly try was not a forward pass.

I happened to be lucky to be in England at that time and bought a ticket to the game.
I was a League fan amongst a bunch of toffs and was made to feel like an outcast by the leather patch brigade surrounding me when I was cheering for Wigan.
f**k them.

Lol at Shaun Edwards comments after the game. - "It was the best game of Union I've ever seen because rugby union isn't normally that exciting. Boom!!

 

[mongoose]

Expected a link to The Roar at the bottom.

haha that was going to be my reply. Some lunatic writes that article at least once a year on TheRoar

 

[Jamberoo]

haha that was going to be my reply. Some lunatic writes that article at least once a year on TheRoar

Is that journo a League or Union writer? Hard to tell if he is tounge in cheek or serious?

 

[Captain Apollo]

Is that journo a League or Union writer? Hard to tell if he is tounge in cheek or serious?

It was written by Malcom Knox. He's a Rugby Union writer for the Sydney Morning Herald.

 

[taipan]

It was written by Malcom Knox. He's a Rugby Union writer for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Wasn't he a former Bear's supporter?

 

[Dark Corner]

I happened to be lucky to be in England at that time and bought a ticket to the game.
I was a League fan amongst a bunch of toffs and was made to feel like an outcast by the leather patch brigade surrounding me when I was cheering for Wigan.
f**k them.

Lol at Shaun Edwards comments after the game. - "It was the best game of Union I've ever seen because rugby union isn't normally that exciting. Boom!!

Shame Shaun Edwards didn't play as Wigan could of won it with him being England schoolboy captain at Union.
I also loved watching the Middlesex 7's which Wigan won but it's a shame the only England Union player at the contest was Lawrence Dallaglio as the likes of Will Carling, Rory Underwood and the rest of the England team were on holiday or resting ...yeah...wink...snigger.

 

[Captain Apollo]

From the Wide World of Sports website -

Mark Levy: AFL 'saviour' Gillon McLachlan has been shown up by NRL's Peter V'landys
By Mark Levy
2 hours ago

AFL chief executive Gil McLachlan was obviously looking for some free publicity over the weekend by talking to journalists about the way in which he's handled the global health crisis, but to suggest he's some sort of saviour is just ridiculous.

McLachlan has allowed several AFL club presidents to attack the way in which rugby league has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the proof is in the pudding with the NRL back on the field and limited supporters returning to the grounds from this weekend.


ARL Commission chairman Peter V'landys deserves all the credit because he's been lobbying the federal and state governments while his counterparts in the AFL have sat on their hands and taken potshots at a sporting administrator who's been dubbed rugby league's hero.

Senior figures within the AFL have told me that McLachlan and his executive team - who earn a combined $10 million per year - are actually taking a backseat to watch what V'landys, the NRL and Racing NSW are able to achieve in getting crowds back to the footy and the races.

What's that old saying: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

McLachlan isn't showing leadership in a crisis. The AFL boss is following the lead of a man in V'landys who's determination has been questioned by the likes of Eddie McGuire.

It's a sad indictment on the AFL when those covering the game are too afraid to call out the hypocrisy from those in charge, instead writing puff-pieces about how many hours the chief executive is working and the lack of sleep he's been getting.

Explain that to the thousands of Australians who are unemployed.

It's no surprise some sections of the media have become mouthpieces for the AFL because if they dare criticise the powerbrokers, they run the risk of losing their accreditation.

I've never held an AFL media pass, so I don't have that problem.

A sporting code looks to its leaders in a time of crisis, something the AFL is sadly lacking.

V'landys is running two codes that have emerged from the pandemic with flying colours ... can the same be said for AFL Chairman Richard Goyder?

Goyder and McLachlan actually penned an open letter to the supporters on Sunday, writing: "It's been important that we get our game back on for you - the millions of people who support our 18 AFL clubs and 14 AFLW teams - and also for all those who support and participate in community football across every part of Australia."

Don't be fooled by their thanks, you should instead be questioning their reluctance to follow the lead of their counterparts in rugby league.

McLachlan dropped his guard in the Herald Sun on Saturday, describing V'Landys and rugby league as "determined" and conceded, "We keep an eye on what everyone's doing, but we focus on what we're doing".

We're a long way from sitting around the campfire and singing kumbaya, but it's a start.

It's terrific to see the AFL making its long-awaited return this week, but let's not forget the NRL got the jump on them over the last fortnight.

Rugby league continues to lead the way through the COVID-19 pandemic and it's time the other codes learnt a thing or two from our determined chairman Peter V'landys.