NRL might be in dreamland, but it's feeling like a million dollars
Patrick Smith
From: The Australian
July 29, 2011 12:00AM
THE AFL would not say this publicly, because it is the home of too many fine men and women, and thus it would consider it impolite to suggest the NRL was barking mad if it actually thought it would get as much as $1.4 billion for its broadcast rights.
Such reserve would have nothing to do with the chance that to deride the NRL claim would be inflammatory in what is an increasingly sensitive struggle between both codes to define their roles in Australia's sporting culture.
And, yes, you are right to be surprised that the AFL would be considered so polite given that its chief executive, Andrew Demetriou, dressed in camouflage, chairs meetings with a pack of attack dogs, fed once every other week, straining on their AFL-endorsed choker chains.
But we don't need Demetriou to tell us the NRL might well have redefined optimism. Not that he has. No senior AFL spokesman has made comment. But colleague and The Australian's media expert James Chessell wrote insightfully on Monday that, well, "tell 'em they're dreaming".
Roughly, Chessell's assessment was based thus: that a competition which has two teams up and running from next season in every state bar Tasmania - where it will have a two-team presence - is going to have more negotiating clout than a two-state competition that has sprouted a club in Melbourne and another in Auckland.
In any given week from next season the AFL will have one game being played in every state, every round, Tasmania aside. This year it has taken its game from Darwin, down the seaboard to Cairns, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and around to Adelaide and Perth. That, by any description, is a national coverage even if AFL might not be the national sport. Yet even with just a two-state dominance - NSW and Queensland - the NRL has a 60 per cent grab of the Australian population.
There are inherent problems in the NRL game itself as Chessell has pointed out. It runs for just two hours and it does not have the natural breaks for commercials that the AFL game has, or at least, has manipulated. To run it into 6pm Sunday news programs, the NRL would have to start a game at 4pm. That would hurt crowd figures and late finishes in the dusk-to-dark are not ideal for unsophisticated suburban grounds.
So why the NRL optimism? Firstly, the rights were undersold last deal and this time around the Seven Network is in for the kill. To take the NRL away from Nine would be a deadly blow to a network that has rolled over so lamely to Seven as the most significant force in Australian television. So, with Nine holding the first and last rights, its final bid will be determined not so much by its own good sense but by Seven's or any other party's aggression.
While the $1.4bn screaming headline might not have been what David Gallop wanted or predicted following last week's briefing with club bosses, it has done him or the game no harm.
Through experience in all Australian football, there is nothing so debilitating than codes being scared about their immediate future. It hurts everything. Playing performance, member support, attendance, sponsorship. The negative media coverage breaks the spirit. Every code has felt that. No one is quite certain even now whether North Melbourne writhes with excitement or is rehearsing its death throes.
Off the back of a bunch of positive figures and feelings, the NRL is walking now with a jaunt and not a limp. Clubs can work with greater energy and enthusiasm knowing considerable help is on its way, be it with the low estimate of $1bn for the broadcast rights or the top figure of $1.4bn.
Confidence, too, that by November the game will be led by an independent commission. It might have come begrudgingly but new governance is here. No matter how altruistically News Limited (publisher of The Australian) and the ARL tackled issues confronting the sport, it was compromise management at best.
This year, TV audiences have grown by 20 per cent and the Monday night experience has been revitalised. The more the NRL feels better about itself, the harder it will be for the AFL administration to convince its own clubs that it must continue to contribute to the code's $400 million expansion into the northern markets. And, as the dispute between the players and the AFL makes only the most sluggish progress, it is fair for the players to insist money be spent on them and not some feel-good but fruitless crusade up north.
The NRL might not make $1.4bn with its next broadcast rights. More important than that at the moment is that the sport is genuinely optimistic. And feeling a million dollars.
