It is understood Channel Ten made a serious bid of $800 million for four games, all in prime time, nationally, on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights. This must have been a tempting offer, given Ten would be scheduling one more free-to-air game around Australia.
Presumably, any add-on by Fox Sports for the four games it would cover was less than $225 million, otherwise it would have equalled the combined Nine/Fox Sports deal of $1.025 billion and been an attractive proposition because of superior national coverage.
However, Fox Sports desperately wanted to retain its Saturday and Monday night monopoly and the Ten offer would have ended this.
Still, it raises questions that an ARLC spokesman could not answer and yesterday's press conference did not reveal the Nine/Fox Sports split of the $1.025 billion fee, unlike the AFL deal where the free-to-air and pay TV amounts were announced separately.
Assuming Fox Sports stumped up half the $1.025 billion paid, it raises the question why they would be willing to pay less than half this for daylight games. The answer could lie with the last-minute involvement in negotiations of Kim Williams, the boss of News Ltd which half owns Fox Sports, who may have gazumped Lachlan Murdoch, chairman of Ten and a director of News Corporation.
Rugby league now has control over its broadcasting destiny from the expiry of the five-year deal, meaning it can take advantage of technological changes that will allow it to sell games direct to the public.
The AFL is positioning itself for afl.com.au where they will produce their own games and sell to subscribers, cutting out pay TV, such as Foxtel, while retaining some games for free-to-air TV to satisfy anti-siphoning requirements.
Until yesterday, rugby league was prevented from doing so because News Ltd's merely had to equal any broadcasting offer made up to 2027 to win the rights.
Ok since no one here seems to be able to read properly it seems that I need to point out this little presumed fact. The 10 bid seems to have been only 4 games and docbrown seems to be skewing the facts a little, understandably to save a little face.
But if this article is right, then for the Commission to just go belly up like they did is at best a display of complete amateurism and at worst an act of total corporate misconduct. As if they couldn't find at least another 200 mil from say Ch7, hell they probably could have gotten close to that from the ABC for the other 4 games FFS.
What a disgrace.
