NRL cash row: why clubs want bigger slice of the $140m pie
Cash-strapped NRL clubs are responsible for 95 per cent of the $140 million in revenue generated by the game, but say they receive less than half that amount.
It is one of the main reasons the clubs have been pushing so hard for an independent commission to take over the running of the code from News Ltd and the ARL and officials are fuming at claims in today's News Ltd's papers that they are the ones preventing the new body from starting on November 1.
"We wanted the Independent Commission in place on November 1 last year, not this year, so to try and blame us is a joke," one NRL club chairman told the Herald.
Fed up by the pace of change, and with even premiers Manly struggling financially, the clubs are refusing to renew membership agreements to play in next year's competition unless they receive a significant increase in their annual club grant from $3.85 million to $6 million.
News Ltd and the ARL, who between them have taken more than $224 million from the game in the 14-year existence of the NRL, won't hand over control to the independent commission until the clubs have signed the new contracts, agreeing to a specified amount for each year's grant.
As a last resort, the clubs may break away and start their own competition - a type of "
reverse Super League", with the clubs breaking away from News Ltd.
It is an option that has been talked about for two years, with the Herald running a front page story on December 12, 2009 revealing that club officials were considering it as a possibility if the commission didn't come to fruition.
At the time, the clubs were hamstrung by their membership agreements that committed them to the NRL until the end of the 2011season.
Now those agreements have expired and even the News Ltd-owned Broncos and Storm are said to be united with the other 14 clubs - although the last time Melbourne directors went against the media company and challenged the penalties imposed for salary cap breaches they were sacked from the board.
The clubs believe that the game is being held back financially under the current ownership structure and the profits generated by the new body will rival AFL.
But even without making an extra cent, the game will immediately be better off as News and the ARL won't automatically be entitled to take out $8 million each every year.
The ARL's share is to pay for grass roots development and representative football and in recent seasons it has been taking $24 million per year out of the NRL kitty.
However, under the Independent Commission, there will be no ARL - just state bodies - and the streamlining of league's mutitple administrations should also result in massive savings.
The clubs, who collectively stand to lose $30 million for the season just finished without cash injections from leagues clubs and private owners, say they are entitled to that additional money.
After all, they argue, it is the clubs who pay the players and are responsible for all the associated expenses involved with putting a competitive NRL team on the field each week that now costs up to $25 million per year for the wealthiest clubs.
Clubs were told at the NRL's conference in July of plans to increase the annual grant to $7.2 million per year when the new television deal, which officials hope will be worth up to $1.4 billion over five years is finalised for the 2013 season.
But the clubs believe the annual grant needs to be significantly increased before then, and they say that all they have done is seek a funding increase in the same manner as the NSWRL or QRL would do.
There are a number of other issues to be resolved in the days before the independent commission is due to commence but the fact that an email sent by South Sydney chairman Nicholas Pappas on behalf of the clubs to News Ltd's Ian Phillip, ARL chief executive Geoff Carr, NRL chief executive David Gallop, QRL director Terry Mackenroth and chairman elect of the independent commission, John Grant found its way to News Ltd papers within hours and was described as a "ransom note" suggests yet another deadline is unlikely to be met.
