Official NRL Opens Talks with Digital Giants

DinkumDog

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Good to see V’Landys thinking big - he’s opened discussions with Google, Amazon and Facebook regarding streaming of NRL content (Origin the initial focus) and opening it to a larger audience. I don’t have a sub to the Oz but maybe a Limited News account (same stable as the Terrorgraph) can unlock this whole article and someone might post the full story...

https://amp.theaustralian.com.au/sp...t/news-story/2302d0c3d634c7f406cd9923df739622
 
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off-tap-robbie

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ARL Commission chair Peter V’landys will host club bosses on Friday morning at Rugby League Central with a bad case of jet lag but a much greater understanding of the broadcasting landscape after a rapid-fire trip to the west coast of America where he broke bread with Fox Corp boss Lachlan Murdoch and held talks with some of the world’s biggest streaming services.

It is understood V’landys and NRL commercial manager Andrew Abdo travelled to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where they met executives from streaming and tech giants Amazon Prime, Facebook and Google.

V’landys has made the broadcasting deal his priority and while the game’s existing partners – the Nine Network and Fox Sports – remain in the box seat, there is also an acknowledgment that it would be remiss of the commission not to take a closer look at the streaming options, some of whom have begun to dabble in sport.

Only this week, Facebook announced a partnership with the International Cricket Council, while they already have deals in place to stream Major League Soccer matches, Major League Baseball and World Surf League events.

The biggest streaming player in recent times has arguably been Amazon Prime, who for the past two years have televised the NFL’s Thursday night football.

This year, they broke into the Premier League market when they bought the rights to 10 games in total. That decision was richly rewarded with a record number of subscriptions, no doubt whetting the company’s appetite for sporting content.

Enter rugby league. Or at least that is what V’landys and the commission hope, if not now, then certainly down the track as streaming services become bigger players in the Australian sporting market.

V’landys’ trip to America signals an escalation in planning for broadcasting negotiations as the commission continue to map out a path forward – the current rights deal expires at the end of 2022.

His meeting with Murdoch could also be seen as an indication of the regard he holds for the game’s relationship with Fox Sports, which runs until the end of 2022.

The year may be in its infancy, and the existing deal may have a further two years to run, but there is an acknowledgment that the game needs to start planning now rather than later.

V’landys and chief executive Todd Greenberg have already publicly broached the idea of expanding to a 17-team competition, which would mean introducing a second side in Brisbane as early as 2023. Clubs and consortiums are falling over themselves to become the chosen one, although money will ultimately dictate whether expansion goes ahead.

The broadcasting deal isn’t the only major issue on the table. V’landys and the commission are yet to strike a new deal with Greenberg, who has a two-year option as part of his existing multimillion-dollar contract.

Both V’landys and Greenberg have insisted talks are ongoing, yet time is running out if a deal is to be done before the start of the premiership and the longer it takes, the more it fuels rumours that all is not well between the chair and his chief executive.

Amid the talk of tension, V’landys’ decision to head to America without the chief executive will do little to douse speculation that the game’s powerbrokers are weighing up Greenberg’s future at the helm of what is now a $500m business.

His cause would appear to have been helped by the latest financial figures, which revealed the game registered a $30m profit last season. As revealed in The Australian recently, that figure was roughly $3m above projections at the start of the year, an indication that Greenberg and his executive team have exceeded even their own expectations.

Yet clubs want more details around the financial data and are expected to turn up the heat on the NRL executive at Friday morning’s meeting, in the knowledge that the game has consistently returned big profits at the beginning of broadcasting cycles only to drop away after that.
 

Psycho Doggie

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Is this for reals or just to create a fake bargaining chip to try and push Nein/Faux a bit higher?
 

DinkumDog

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Is this for reals or just to create a fake bargaining chip to try and push Nein/Faux a bit higher?
Either way if the game gets more money it's hardly a bad thing.
I reckon it's for real.
The digital/social giants are going to hit a ceiling eventually on subscribers, ad revenue etc.
A key opportunity for them is content rights and sport is huge.
Facebook almost grabbed the rights to the IPL when they were willing to pay $600m for a 6-week tournament just to get people in India to sign up to the platform.
They lost out only because there were bandwidth concerns in India and where the vast majority of the population were still tied to traditional linear/pay TV. That's going to change in time.
If it can expand the audience for rugby league and bring in bigger dollars as well, it's a good thing (and I don't mean Super League style, where the conflict of interest was that the governing body also was the media company trying to broadcast the game).
 
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