NRL Free To Air TV Rights 2023-2027 (Nine)

This is pretty stupid if this is true… why would they do that?

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They’re a commercial company. At the end of the day they’re there to make money and they don’t see the investment and the end result paying off for them in this current climate.

Reality / Entertainment shows are their main focus in primetime and it seems to be working for them.

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Yes it does seem that they aren’t interested in being a “full service” network anymore. News and sports not important.

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The only thing keeping the local news going would be the local 10 management here supporting it, as they know the importance and value of it in Australia. But when push comes to shove from above, it may also go too.

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The Sunday Telegraph’s Phil Rothfield writes that ARLC chairman Peter V’Landys hosted ViacomCBS ANZ co-CEO Jarrod Villani in his suite at Royal Randwick racecourse today. Could be V’Landys sizing out 10’s potential bid.

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Here’s the link:

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They could have been talking about horse racing.

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I really hope this is true

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They don’t need any sport. They need to have programming that attracts viewers in proportion to its cost.

Sports rights are vastly inflated over any sense of their value, and the way people watch TV now means they have almost no value as a vehicle to promote their shows - it’s far easier for Ten to run ads on social media and outdoor targeting specific audiences to promote their programming, than to buy expensive sport and hope that it gets enough eyeballs to promote their other shows.

Nine would certainly be able to match any rights fee for the NRL that would fit within the bounds of something that would be profitable to Ten on its own merit - and the ongoing Foxtel part of the deal make any attempt to consider a multi-platform play involving Paramount+ impossible.

Liking Channel 10 isn’t a reason enough for them to own sports rights.

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They do need sport on their schedule, they could even go for portions of the NRL. Whether it be just the standalone Premiership, Tests or even State of Origin. I know what I’ll be choosing.

They need eyeballs on their network, only way doing that is through sport. We all know that after what happened when the AFL rights lapsed.

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Going way off topic but does this mean that channel ten are not going to renew Moto gp and F1 rights?

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When Ten lost the AFL, Netflix didn’t operate in Australia, 10play didn’t exist and analogue television was still broadcasting.

The media landscape is totally different than it was then, you don’t get eyeballs by hoping that people tune in for loss making sport and then decide to watch The Cube because they saw one promo for it while watching a sporting event.

I can’t think of the last show I watched on Seven was - but I’ve probably watched dozens of hours of sporting events on the network in the last year, while I can’t think of the last sporting event I watched on Ten was, but they have programs I watch, so Ten likely made far more money from me as a viewer than Seven did, while Seven would have spent orders of magnitude more on that content.

The question isn’t if Ten want to show sport or not - it’s whether it dollar for dollar is the best programming investment for them. There might be some sports rights deals that fit that bill - but with the likely competition between Seven and Nine, they will push the cost above what the real value of the rights are.

It’s also a bad fit for structure of the network - the NRL struggles outside of Sydney and Brisbane - and in the regional areas where it does best, unlike Nine in NNSW and Seven in Queensland - Ten don’t own the stations and have lower affiliation revenue shares, making an investment in the NRL in particular worse value than the same amount would be for Seven or Nine - simply because they capture less of it back in advertising.

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Really selling it there - “Yes, we want to be your broadcast partner, as long as we can get out of the contract of the last sport we stole from Nine a couple of years back”.

You would think the Seven/Cricket Australia debacle would put off any sport organisation from partnering with them in the immediate future.

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The streaming rights (formerly owned by Telstra on the Live Pass) are up for grabs. The NRL wanted to get some more money from 9 through Stan/9Now, so they didn’t renew. Kayo/Foxtel Go would still have rights.

What happened to Telstra’s Live Pass and yet Ten’s Shoestring Budget are a Far Cry from the 1980’s where they had League Rights.

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Buzz was talking about the tv rights on Sky sports radio this morning saying that the NRL is growing frustrated with ch9 and can’t afford to sit and wait for there offer.
Mentioned that V,landys was in deep discussions yesterday with Co Ceo at Ten.

Buzz would go on to say that Channel Ten are banging on the door and want to do a deal.
Interesting if true.

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It cant be cheap to have the rights to a sport like the NRL - not only are you paying a fair amount for the rights but then it’s not exactly cheap to put them to air. Not to mention that its only really that popular in two states

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Indeed it’s unfortunate for broadcasters that the AFL is as close to a national game as there is and even that struggles in Sydney and Brisbane for viewers

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I find this hard to believe for all the reasons Moe mentioned and considering the way ViacomCBS has been running Ten. I’d accept it if the exclusive streaming rights were also up for grabs and they could extract value by having the sport also tied to Paramount+, but not with streaming also available on Foxtel/Kayo for the foreseeable future. Sounds like interest is being talked up to increase the value and force Nine to dig deep and pay more than what the sport is really worth.

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It would be too expensive for 10 and they don’t have any sport presenters/ reporters that would do a great job. They would need to hire many from other networks

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