NRL TV rights deal: Global streaming services like Netflix to help deliver record $3b broadcast bonanza

[Pulga]

https://archive.md/aEU3y#selection-1075.0-1099.128

[Jonty58]

Impressive.

[Henson Park Old Firm]

9 minutes ago, Jonty58 said:

Impressive.

And people don't want the NRL getting involved in Super League.

[Eddie]

38 minutes ago, Henson Park Old Firm said:

And people don't want the NRL getting involved in Super League.

Why would you want anyone not within 5 miles of an M62 junction to be involved with SL? 

[Coggo]

Surely this is why the NRL would want Super League - to have more TV rights to sell worldwide.

[Damien]

The NRL needs to be very careful about splitting up rights and the cost to fans. It's certainly not been good for Football fans in the UK and has been pretty disastrous for things like the Champions League. There are similar examples in RU.

The NRL should be able to get an extremely good, increased deal as is without selling itself completely and alienating the next generation of fans.

[Wakefield Ram]

26 minutes ago, Coggo said:

Surely this is why the NRL would want Super League - to have more TV rights to sell worldwide.

The question is would adding SL into the deal increase the value by enough to compensate for sharing the money with SL clubs?

They might argue that SL is a lower overall standard, played in smaller grounds with smaller crowds etc...

[Toby Chopra]

14 minutes ago, Damien said:

The NRL needs to be very careful about splitting up rights and the cost to fans. It's certainly not been good for Football fans in the UK and has been pretty disastrous for things like the Champions League. There are similar examples in RU.

The NRL should be able to get an extremely good, increased deal as is without selling itself completely and alienating the next generation of fans.

Agreed. What's always worth remembering about the NFL deals is that the vast majority of the games are still on free-to-air networks - the market is so rich and the audiences are so big that it still generates billions without cutting out fans.

In fact they're in a virtuous circle now with the NFL being the only sport being able to deliver old-style size TV audiences, so advertisers are willing to pay an even bigger premium for it. 

What's interesting about that NRL article is how many times Vlandys boasts that they're the number 1 watched sport in Australia. That's key to his whole pitch. That will only apply if they keep most games free to air for years to come, rather than jumping to maximise pay TV revenues in the short term. They've done brilliantly, but need to keep playing the long game.

[Toby Chopra]

17 minutes ago, Wakefield Ram said:

The question is would adding SL into the deal increase the value by enough to compensate for sharing the money with SL clubs?

They might argue that SL is a lower overall standard, played in smaller grounds with smaller crowds etc...

After reading the article, I could see them offering a package to a streamer like Netflix of 2 NRL games a week plus the WHOLE of Superleague as filler.

And if our share was more than the £21m a year we get now, why not?

[Damien]

I think like the Vegas betting talk the whole worldwide TV rights value is a misnomer. The headline figure is driven by what the game is worth in Australia and NZ, not some huge demand for rights worldwide. Even in the UK the NRL TV rights are worth very little. The NRL currently gets $2 billion anyway, with what was seen as a poor Covid TV deal, and since then the AFL has signed a bumper deal that naturally increases the value of NRL rights with the obvious correlation between the two.

So if we are saying $3 billion ballpark then $2.9 million of that maybe driven by the Australian and NZ market and what it gets anyway through Australia and NZ. That's a piece of the cake that someone like Netflix will be paying money for. I'm not convinced lumping in SL rights with a couple of NRL games is making the NRL more money than Watch NRL or making SL rights hugely valuable.

[Sports Prophet]

2 hours ago, Henson Park Old Firm said:

And people don't want the NRL getting involved in Super League.

No, they don’t know how big soccer is in the UK and they only do well in Aus because they are the biggest sport in the northern cities, as if that happened by accident and blah blah blah

[Sports Prophet]

1 hour ago, Damien said:

The NRL needs to be very careful about splitting up rights and the cost to fans. It's certainly not been good for Football fans in the UK and has been pretty disastrous for things like the Champions League. There are similar examples in RU.

The NRL should be able to get an extremely good, increased deal as is without selling itself completely and alienating the next generation of fans.

You call it right Damien. Multiple pay service broadcasters is only likely to deliver lower viewing audiences than it currently gets with one pay subscriber and one free to air broadcaster.

In my opinion, Aus is too small a market to start splitting fixtures with multiple paywalls.

[corkonian77]

27 minutes ago, Sports Prophet said:

No, they don’t know how big soccer is in the UK and they only do well in Aus because they are the biggest sport in the northern cities, as if that happened by accident and blah blah blah

They know  a lot about UK sporting market.

They  just don't say it in public.

[Farmduck]

1 hour ago, Toby Chopra said:

 

What's interesting about that NRL article is how many times Vlandys boasts that they're the number 1 watched sport in Australia. That's key to his whole pitch. That will only apply if they keep most games free to air for years to come, rather than jumping to maximise pay TV revenues in the short term. They've done brilliantly, but need to keep playing the long game.

There's never been a time in NRL when most games were free to air. There was a time when all the televised games were on FTA but that was only 2 games a week. Plus 1 game/week when the mid-week cup was played. There are currently 3 games per week on FTA: Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Everything else* has been on Pay TV since about 1994.

*except Origin and the Grand Final which are live on FTA and delayed on Pay TV.

[Sports Prophet]

8 minutes ago, Farmduck said:

There's never been a time in NRL when most games were free to air. There was a time when all the televised games were on FTA but that was only 2 games a week. Plus 1 game/week when the mid-week cup was played. There are currently 3 games per week on FTA: Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Everything else* has been on Pay TV since about 1994.

*except Origin and the Grand Final which are live on FTA and delayed on Pay TV.

Don’t forget post Origin, free to air gets a Saturday night club game added as well doesn’t it?

Still your point stands. Most games are on pay tv. But minimum three games a week will want to be a continued feature in my opinion.

Edited March 19 by Sports Prophet

[Farmduck]

1 minute ago, Sports Prophet said:

Don’t forget post Origin, free to air gets a Saturday night club game added as well doesn’t it?

Dunno. I watch Kayo and only watch 9 for Origin and GF. If you've got Kayo there's no reason to bother checking the rest of the Ch 9 guide.

[HawkMan]

2 hours ago, Damien said:

The NRL needs to be very careful about splitting up rights and the cost to fans. It's certainly not been good for Football fans in the UK and has been pretty disastrous for things like the Champions League. There are similar examples in RU.

The NRL should be able to get an extremely good, increased deal as is without selling itself completely and alienating the next generation of fans.

Yeah totally disastrous for the Champions League,  nobody bothers with it anymore, stadiums half full, only 20,000 for the Liverpool v PSG match. All the top players invisible,  media ignores it, MOTD Champions League probably to be axed, no international TV interest apart a couple of European countries,  God help the NRL if it went down the CL route, total disaster.

Edited March 19 by HawkMan

[Sports Prophet]

49 minutes ago, Farmduck said:

Dunno. I watch Kayo and only watch 9 for Origin and GF. If you've got Kayo there's no reason to bother checking the rest of the Ch 9 guide.

Same, same. I can’t bear listening to 9

[Father Gascoigne]

58 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

Yeah totally disastrous for the Champions League,  nobody bothers with it anymore, stadiums half full, only 20,000 for the Liverpool v PSG match. All the top players invisible,  media ignores it, MOTD Champions League probably to be axed, no international TV interest apart a couple of European countries,  God help the NRL if it went down the CL route, total disaster.

It's not good for fans when you have to subscribe to multiple subs to follow your team. Are you seriously arguing against that?

[HawkMan]

21 minutes ago, Father Gascoigne said:

It's not good for fans when you have to subscribe to multiple subs to follow your team. Are you seriously arguing against that?

You don't need to subscribe to multiple channels to follow your team even in the Champions League. To watch EVERY match, yes, but FTA highlights mean you don't need to subscribe at all. For Liverpool for example,  TNT will do for CL, a couple will be on Amazon but that's all. What it isn't is a disaster for fans and certainly not for the tournament. The days of TV viewers being entitled to watch everything are long gone. There are always moaners whose sense of entitlement means they think they should see it all without paying  much and still expect to see the top stars. Returning to those days will be mean bye- bye to the top stars, with no competition for broadcasting between rival global TV companies,  the money will go down if its all on one channel. We see that with SL , Sky pay rubbish because they have no competition.

Edited March 19 by HawkMan

[Father Gascoigne]

Just now, HawkMan said:

You don't need to subscribe to multiple channels to follow your team even in the Champions League. To watch EVERY match, yes, but FTA highlights mean you don't need to subscribe at all. For Liverpool for example,  TNT will do for CL, a couple will be on Amazon but that's all. What it isn't is a disaster for fans and certainly not for the tournament. The days of TV viewers being entitled to watch everything are long gone.

People who watch their club generally tend to prefer watching the games, not a highlights package. 

The reason why TNT bought the CL rights is because they understand that fans are like this, which means they're going to have to subscribe to both Sky and TNT to follow their team. I didn't know Amazon even had any rights, so add that too if that's the case. 

If you're anti-consumer, which you clearly are, this is no big deal. It most definitely is a disaster for fans when every single competition their club plays in requires a different subscription. 

 

[HawkMan]

8 minutes ago, Father Gascoigne said:

People who watch their club generally tend to prefer watching the games, not a highlights package. 

The reason why TNT bought the CL rights is because they understand that fans are like this, which means they're going to have to subscribe to both Sky and TNT to follow their team. I didn't know Amazon even had any rights, so add that too if that's the case. 

If you're anti-consumer, which you clearly are, this is no big deal. It most definitely is a disaster for fans when every single competition their club plays in requires a different subscription. 

 

Without being too political,  what's happening in Gaza is a disaster,  fans making do with watching 6 CL group games and not 8 is not a disaster. I'm not anti consumer, but if you want the competition to maintan the standards and attract the top players ( and not going off to Saudi or wherever), the money must come from competitive tendering and that is paid for by subscribers

Edited March 19 by HawkMan

[Damien]

38 minutes ago, Father Gascoigne said:

It's not good for fans when you have to subscribe to multiple subs to follow your team. Are you seriously arguing against that?

It's bizarre and someone just trying to distort a post to be argumenative. The NRL have a pretty good balance now. The AFL have got a substantial increase without splitting everything up into multiple packages. There is no reason the NRL can't do the same and still have a better balance.

[Father Gascoigne]

2 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

Without being too political,  what's happening in Gaza is a disaster,  fans making do with watching 6 CL group games and not 8 is not a disaster. I'm not anti consumer, but if you want the competition to maintan the standards and attract the top players ( and not going off the Saudi or wherever), the money must come from competitive tendering and that is paid for by subscribers

That comparison is disingenuous. You know the context I was using 'disaster' in. It's unfair to bring Gaza into it. 

As for the rest, if you subscribe to Sky, you then have to subscribe to TNT for those six matches and, according to you, Amazon as well for the other two. At least the League Cup is on Sky, and FA Cup on BBC. In any case, that's three different subscriptions if you want to follow every match your team plays. 

I guarantee you if team wages halved overnight tomorrow, it would make no material difference to most fans. People follow their clubs. They don't truly care about losing players to Saudi Arabia. They're not going to start supporting Al Hilal over Liverpool if Salah goes to KSA next season. This just sounds like a regurgitation of the media/broadcasters gaslighting fans into thinking that paying more is beneficial for everyone. 

[HawkMan]

1 hour ago, Father Gascoigne said:

That comparison is disingenuous. You know the context I was using 'disaster' in. It's unfair to bring Gaza into it. 

As for the rest, if you subscribe to Sky, you then have to subscribe to TNT for those six matches and, according to you, Amazon as well for the other two. At least the League Cup is on Sky, and FA Cup on BBC. In any case, that's three different subscriptions if you want to follow every match your team plays. 

I guarantee you if team wages halved overnight tomorrow, it would make no material difference to most fans. People follow their clubs. They don't truly care about losing players to Saudi Arabia. They're not going to start supporting Al Hilal over Liverpool if Salah goes to KSA next season. This just sounds like a regurgitation of the media/broadcasters gaslighting fans into thinking that paying more is beneficial for everyone. 

As a fan of course I'd watch my team if the competition lost top players because the money coming in went down. But it wouldn't be the same without the best in it. I suppose it's a matter of personal circumstances.  No one wants to pay extortionate amounts, but I don't feel its extortionate but what I'd expect to watch the games I want to watch. Back on topic, the NRL deal is good and splitting the packages up to get more income isn't a problem for me. Its a great comp, I watch more than SL, if the dream of RL in general hitting the big time globally I mean really big, then paying more for it is inevitable.

 

Suppose TNT want a piece of the RL action and bid against Sky, both end up with a package,  the game gets more income   and suddenly to watch all the games fans have to have two subscriptions.  Any complaints then? 

Edited March 19 by HawkMan