Ask Abdo: The issues around Vegas, broadcast deals and NRL contracts
Dan Walsh
By Dan Walsh
February 2, 2025 — 4.40pm
Save
NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo has a summer tan, a five-year anniversary and his hands full.
Abdo’s fifth season in charge of rugby league begins to a soundtrack of record-breaking TV ratings and crowds from recent seasons. Expansion plans already announced and soon to be. Game-defining broadcast negotiations.
And as always, the usual great, not-so good and everything in between that makes up any given day in rugby league. With the first trial matches beginning this week and Steedens about to be kicked in anger, the NRL boss takes a breather and a look at the game’s biggest issues and the year to come.
Rugby league is coming to America, again. Abdo and ARL Commission chair Peter V’landys have already touched down in Las Vegas once this year for a final round of meetings ahead of the game’s return Stateside.
Abdo is understandably optimistic about the impact a quadruple-header will have given Super League’s Wigan and Warrington and an Australia-England women’s Test have been added to the season-opener.
The NRL is predicting a crowd of around 50,000 for the four games, with 35,000 sold already - more than 25 per cent of those in the US.
An increased roll-up on last year’s 40,000 punters at Allegiant Stadium is a strong start.
But the real watch is how many eyeballs rugby league’s latest US foray attracts after an average audience of just 61,000 tuned in to watch last year’s Sea Eagles-Rabbitohs season opener on cable network’s Fox Sports 1.
That broadcast missed the first 17 minutes too when the preceding college basketball match went into overtime, while the NRL’s Roosters-Broncos audience dropped to 44,000.
Penrith-Cronulla, the women’s Test and Super League match will occupy the same FS1 and FOX Soccer Plus airwaves this year.
But that doesn’t diminish the significance of rugby league cracking the US free-to-air market for the first time, when come 4pm local time the Warriors and Raiders will be broadcast live on FOX - which can reach 125 million American households.
“It’s huge, it’s effectively opening rugby league up to a bigger audience than it has ever had and we’ve brought on new sponsors because of that, and the Las Vegas event in general,” Abdo said.
“The reach of introducing fans who watch FOX free-to-air, to introduce them to the sport and get that exposure on a network channel, we’ll see a much bigger US audience engaged and watching the NRL.”
Abdo and V’landys have always argued a true reflection of rugby league’s Vegas venture won’t be clear until years four and five of its deal with the Nevada government.
NRL club figures believe the game’s outlay on its maiden voyage cost as much as $15 million. Head office has always kept its Vegas spending under wraps, but denies the figure is that large.
The much-touted push into US betting markets remains a work in progress too, but the belief is that new revenue avenues generated by the Vegas venture will have it close to breaking even.
“We’ve still got a month to go in terms of ticket sales, but we’ve sold out corporate inventory, brought on new sponsors, increased subscribers in America and made gains in global streaming rights,” Abdo said.
“The fact that we’ve expanded and have even more fans attending now is a good thing for a long-term strategy to take rugby league to the rest of the world.”
The biggest question ahead of Las Vegas: who blows the Raiders viking horn?
The biggest question ahead of Las Vegas: who blows the Raiders viking horn?CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
Abdo declined to speculate on the most pressing question of all - who will blow the Raiders pre-game viking horn, but vowed to help however possible in Canberra CEO Don Furner’s pursuit of a Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski or newly minted president Donald Trump to do the honours.
All in on the All Stars
While the NRL chases the stars, stripes and bright lights of Vegas, the traditional Indigenous All Stars fixture is struggling to find its place on rugby league’s stage.
This year’s Indigenous side is already going to be without a slew of its best players for the February 15 clash with Adam Blair’s Maori side.
Indigenous stars Cody Walker, Nicho Hynes, Josh Addo-Carr and Latrell Mitchell will all miss the All Stars clash.
Indigenous stars Cody Walker, Nicho Hynes, Josh Addo-Carr and Latrell Mitchell will all miss the All Stars clash.CREDIT: MONIQUE WESTERMANN
Latrell Mitchell, Josh Addo-Carr (both suspension), Cody Walker, Nicho Hynes, Braydon Trindall, Will Kennedy, Jesse Ramien, Bradman Best and Adam Elliott have all pulled out, and the NRL is exploring shifting the game to another point in the season.
“The All Stars will always be part of the calendar as far as I’m concerned, it is such an important match and week for the game,” Abdo said.
“We’ll continue to look at when the best time to play it is, because in the last couple of years, [a mid-February schedule] has been difficult.
“We want to make sure that everyone who wants to play is able to and that there isn’t too much pressure on the players.”
Critics have lined up the NRL allowing Mitchell and Addo-Carr to serve a match of their respective off-field suspensions in the All Stars too, as the likes of Reece Walsh and Brandon Smith have done previously.
“That’s just an application of the rules, we’ve always consistently treated the All Stars as a representative fixture and always will,” Abdo said.
“Players and clubs are able to make that application like they would with Test matches and Origin, and those players’ selection [for the All Stars] was virtually automatic given they’ve played for the Indigenous side so consistently over the years.”
The broadcaster bucks
Discussions will begin in earnest this year around the NRL’s next broadcasting deal beyond 2027, with an expanded competition including Papua New Guinea and most likely Perth opening up potential new season structures and TV time slots.
Nothing is on or off the table given the three years still to run on the current deals with Foxtel and Nine (publishers of this masthead), and the rapidly changing times for traditional broadcasters, where Foxtel has just been acquired by UK sports streaming platform DAZN.
A clamour for streaming live sport is predicted from domestic operators (such as Nine’s Stan Sport) and international giants like Netflix and Amazon. New anti-siphoning laws passed in mid-2024 also contain a loophole that could allow such streaming services to outbid local free-to-air providers for digital rights to sport broadcasts.
Adding a distinctly rugby league flavour to the mix is the code’s record-breaking ratings in recent years, up against the long-held angst of the AFL’s last broadcasting deal outstripping the NRL’s.
The NFL’s model of individual assets like Monday and Thursday night football being sold to different broadcasters offers one means of capitalising on a shifting market.
“But you need to think about making sure that the game is accessible and easy to watch too,” Abdo says of engaging multiple broadcasters and platforms. “It could be that you have a party that owns exclusive or non-exclusive rights to a particular day of football or a particular type of football.
“So how we monetise the women’s game, how we monetise the State of Origin or the internationals, all of that is an opportunity for us to think about how we allocate the rights to try and get the best possible deal for the game.”
Time for a trade time
Player contracts and movements will always dominate both rugby league’s news cycle and discontent among supporters.
A tightening up of contract negotiation periods has been mooted forever, and pushed back on by the RLPA for just as long.
The NRL backed away from its most recent transfer window model when the last Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations came to a standstill.
What your club is hoping to learn from the NRL trials
Mid-season transfer periods and limiting players’ ability to sign with rival clubs more than a year in advance remain in the NRL’s thinking. However Abdo is wary of speaking out of school ahead of the next CBA talks, which align with the 2027 broadcast negotiations.
“There’s a working group that was identified as part of the CBA, which will include the clubs and players association to try and look at a [contract] model that is stronger and better for everyone than the current model,” he said.
“I don’t want to foreshadow what that working group will come up with. I fully respect the right of the athlete to maximise their earnings. It’s just about making sure that we do it in a way that is not disruptive or a distraction for teams and fans in the season.
“It was identified as something that needs to be focused on now to get it right ahead of any new broadcast deal.”
The NRL chief executive’s fifth season in charge brings big questions about the NRL All Stars, TV contracts, expansion ventures and player movements.
www.smh.com.au
Some west Aussie stuff there
