Super league - What happened?

[Harold Bishop]

Hey guys, just wondering if anyone could help me out with some Uni homework.
I have read the wikipedia article on the Super League war, but found it confusing (maybe because i am really hungover).

If anyone would like to briefly explain what happened, and why that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[madunit]

There are a number of threads on this already here somewhere, I suggest using the search fucntion and look for threads with Superleague in the title.

that'll be pretty quick, and possibly the best results

 

[Razor]

News Ltd didn't have the TV rights, they wanted them because they didn't have the rights to any major sports at all. So they decided to form their own competition signing up players and clubs. The ARL won the court case preventing it from starting in 1996, but Super League won the appeal to start in 1997 - however the judge did not agree with their stance that they were a different sport so player contracts could be voided so any players still contracted to ARL clubs could not leave until their contract was up. Any player that signed with Super League and wanted out, was succesful in their court challenge due to the illegal methods they used in signing players (Dymock, Ritson, McCracken, J Smith were the biggest names that got out. However any players that signed with the ARL(and whose club signed with SL) that wanted out were not successful in their court case, except for those were under 18 due to obvious legal reasons.

 

[The Gambler]

Must be a law subject...

 

[greenos]

Sports Law

 

[Harold Bishop]

Thanks Razor, much appreciated.

 

[Simo]

As has been said basically it was news buying league for pay TV.

Interestingly, as pay tv cluasees had been in RL contracts since the 80's (if pay tv comes in then this person owns the rights) it was signed away to Kerry Packers 9 in the earlier deal like the ones before.

Apparantly early in the piece they approached the ARL about the rights to pay tv and the competition and the ARL said speak to Kerry as he owned the rights, Kerry having an optus vision said bugger off and then SL was well and truely under way as they started there own comp and did all the dodgy signings.

We were so close to not tearing our game apart and rationalising the comp unitedly (as we are trying to do now) all but for waring pay tv companies that within 10 years merged to form 1 operator anyway!!!!!

Heinsights a bitch sometimes.