As I explained earlier, Melbourne Storm were never News Corps team. They didn't give a toss about us. They just were left fitting the bill for the only expansion team outside the heartland post the Rugby League wars.
News Corp wanted to get rid of us as quickly as they could but at that stage there were no buyers.
But as news to make people access media. they were more than happy to make sure we were in the sights of the NRL who at that time were looking for a "big scalp" to try and deter other teams from salary cap breaches (which of course didn't work). So they whacked us with a big stick!
You know that makes absolutely zero business sense. If News were looking to offload the football team from their organisation that was bleeding money, they would not decrease the value even more so to make it easier to sell - it would do the opposite. You would go from a team that is losing money but had a decent value, to a team with no value and losing even more money.
Following on from that, the team was eventually sold in 2013, well and truly after the Storm had rebuilt from the Salary Cap scandal and had won the 2012 premiership. Meaning the value had gone back up (perhaps not to where it was, but enough that the previous moves would make little sense).
Furthermore, given that the team was apparently draining money, there would be no benefit to their news arm to increase coverage about the scandal. They already dominated the Sydney market, and the Melbourne market did not care enough to read about a team that they weren't seemingly interested in.
Now, if you said the NRL were just looking for a 'big scalp' from the get go, I may be able to follow along. But I will guarantee it was not a News Ltd. decision.
The fact is these two instances are nothing a like, yet News Ltd are trying to compare them. Why? You need to look at the history of Rothfield's interaction with the Cronulla Sharks.
