Sunshine Coast Tiger
Juniors
- Messages
- 545
More News Corp quality :lol:
Dave Smith: NRL chief?s shock departure leaves a right mess
DAVE Smith held top-secret talks with Nine boss David Gyngell, ARL chairman John Grant and ARL commissioner Graeme Samuel less than 24 hours before his extraordinary resignation as NRL chief executive yesterday.
The high-level meeting at the NRL?s Moore Park bunker on Monday focused on reviving a viable pay-TV rights deal, after talks broke down when Smith blindsided existing pay-TV rights holder Foxtel by brokering a lucrative new ?free-to-air only? deal with Gyngell.
Smith?s departure now paves the way for discussions with Foxtel and News Corp,
However, the influence of Graeme Samuel, a former ACCC boss, is increasingly coming to the fore in the ongoing negotiations, particularly given Smith?s departure.
Interestingly, it is understood negotiations between the NRL and pay-TV have been on hold in a period that Samuel has been on a three-week vacation in Europe.
Samuel flew back into the country on Saturday, and sources yesterday pointed to Samuel being present in the NRL?s Moore Park HQ on Monday, a day before Smith?s resignation, as telling.
In search of a fresh start, Samuel and Grant will now take charge of ongoing rights negotiations with pay-tv.
Despite suggestions at the time of Smith?s announcement of the free-to-air rights deal in August that there were multiple bidders for the rights, including online media giants like Netflix and Google, none have yet materialised that would pay the sort of money the NRL is seeking.
The key factor in returning Foxtel to the negotiating table is giving it back ?Super Saturday?: a run of back-to-back games on that day. It is believed the NRL will look to broker a deal for Nine to surrender its rights to a prime time Saturday night game, for a price, allowing Foxtel to screen it instead.
http://www.news.com.au/sport/nrl/da...ves-a-right-mess/story-fndujljl-1227576297882
Really hope we keep the four games on FTA TV, that is a win for the fans and as David Smith said not one fan complained about that.
I can't see why Foxtel can't do a deal like they did in the AFL and simulcast some or all of the FTA TV.
I also think their may be other players for the pay TV rights. BEIN sports have been buying a lot of soccer rights in this country and are going after the EPL rights from Foxtel. they could make even bigger inroads if they were to add NRL as well.