Glenn
First Grade
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1st Division???
I assume they mean the Toyota Cup coverage?
1st Division???
I assume they mean the Toyota Cup coverage?
we won't get the same figures until RL is shown, regularly, on FTA in Melb before midnight..
Ummmmmmm, where has the fight club gone???
I read last years grand final got 500000 viewers in New Zealand.~250,000 in New Zealand wouldnt surprise me at all.
Messenger can watch a better league broadcast in the US than south of the border
ROY MASTERS
October 4, 2009
Dally Messenger III and his wife watched yesterday's NRL grand final between the Storm and Parramatta from a bar in New York where the menu offered a ''Big Artie breakfast'' and ''Eggs Wayne Bennettdict.''
''We booked the last table,'' said Messenger, the grandson of the man whose switch from rugby union to league in 1908 guaranteed the success of the fledgling code.
The Messengers watched the game, on delay, at The Australian, a bar-lounge-restaurant at 20 West 38th Street, from 11am US time via Spike TV, the giant cable network which serves North America.
The grand final was televised to more than 55 countries, live via ESPN in Britain and Ireland and Fox Sport in the Middle East, and on delay via Spike TV in Canada and the United States.
Fans in Asia and the Pacific islands saw it live on the Australian Network via a satellite footprint that takes in Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Singapore and the Pacific Islands
Telstra, the NRL sponsor and media partner, provided a live streaming service to international fans outside of New Zealand, the Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
Messenger could have paid $US5.95 ($6.90) to Telstra Big Pond and watched the game live via computer in his hotel room.
The host broadcaster, Nine, televised it live into every Australian state, and Sky New Zealand took the entire match-day coverage.
The bankruptcy of the previous international rights holder, Setanta, has been a blessing for the code.
''Spike TV and ESPN acquired the rights when Setanta went belly-up, and it's worked out all right for us,'' an NRL spokesman said.
The next step for the NRL is to embrace the digital revolution, a global phenomenon that includes the developing world, driven by the growth of fast broadband and internet enabled mobile phones.
Future international rights sales must include negotiations on digital rights.
Foxtel's recent announcement of 30 additional channels and the new offering of movie downloads through broadband is an example of the opportunities via the digital age.
Rugby league has always lagged behind other codes in terms of maximising the value of its broadcast rights, certainly in terms of international sales.
There is almost a cultural cringe factor when rugby league administrators approach broadcasters, as if it is apologising for asking too much.
This is despite the code being one of the first sports in Australia to embrace TV.
The football historian Sean Fagan says: ''Ask a Victorian when was the first live coverage of a footy grand final on Melbourne TV and who were the teams. He will readily inform you it was 1977, when North Melbourne played Collingwood.
''Wrong. The first was a decade earlier, and it wasn't VFL. It was rugby league.''
On September 16, 1967 the first live telecast of a football grand final in Melbourne was the screening of the Canterbury Bankstown v South Sydney game at the SCG.
While the 1967 grand final was being screened live into Melbourne on GTV-9 via coaxial cable from Sydney, more than 90,000 people were at the MCG watching the VFL preliminary final between Carlton and Geelong.
Forty years later rugby league fans in Victoria cannot see live NRL on Nine unless it is a State of Origin game, or a finals match involving the Storm.
In 1967 Nine reached agreement with the NSWRL for a fee of $5000 for TV rights.
Significantly, the VFL had offered its grand final to the four Melbourne stations that same season, but negotiations broke down when the VFL refused to budge on its fee for live coverage. It wanted $25,000 from each station screening it live.
The AFL has always insisted on more money for a product that does not translate as well to TV as rugby league, a game played on a rectangular field with straight lines of defence.
The AFL is asking for $1 billion over five years for its next broadcasting contract, using it to drive its push into western Sydney and the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, the NRL can take the grand final to Bahrain, Bangladesh and Brunei but cannot get its best regular season games into Melbourne.
Dally Messenger III, who refused to take phone calls from Australia while the game was being played, is accustomed to delayed coverage of NRL. He lives in Melbourne, where Nine screens NRL matches after midnight.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald