In the immediate aftermath of Mike Sneesby exiting Nine, ARL boss Peter V’landys has embarked on an ambitious and very public attempt to get Paramount interested in bidding for the next round of NRL rights.
The move was revealed by News Corp’s Phil Rothfield after he spoke to V’landys about his strategy to lock away the next TV deal.
It comes on the day before Paramount ANZ starts its annual Upfront presentations to media and advertisers. The Upfront showcases how the 10 FTA and Paramount+ streaming businesses will invest in content for the calendar year 2025.
The V’landys move is ambitious on a number of fronts. The first is that he is going very early in the search for a new NRL payday. The existing rights deal that sees Nine and Foxtel Group paying a combined $400m a season still has three more years to run across seasons 2025, 2026 and 2027. (That amount also includes a contribution from Sky TV New Zealand.)
Sarah and Lachlan Murdoch with Peter Vlandys at Las Vegas NRL weekend early in 2024.
Rothfield wrote: “Peter V’landys will try to convince one of the world’s richest men to buy the NRL’s free-to-air television rights in the game’s next broadcast deal. The independent commission boss wants a meeting with US businessman Larry Ellison, the new Channel 10 owner, who is worth $265 billion.”
Even if V’landys manages to score an audience with Ellison, V’landys will be hoping he has his son David on hand. Although Larry is backing the Paramount purchase, it’s his son David who will be running the business via his company Skydance Media.
It’s not clear if either of the Ellisons are about to be negotiating rights deals either. If the deal does proceed, which now looks likely, it is not expected to close until sometime in the first half of 2025.
V’landys would also need the support of the Paramount Australian & New Zealand management under Beverley McGarvey.
Another hurdle facing V’landys is how interested will the new owner be in Australia and ownership of Network 10 and Paramount+. There has been some speculation Paramount is looking to offload some of the Paramount+ assets not seen as core to the Skydance acquisition.
See also: Kayo Sports’ NRL 2024 season coverage surges 30% year-on-year
NRL’s search for more dollars means attracting new bidder
“Naturally we’d like to have talks with the new owners,” V’landys told Rothfield.
“We have to look at every option to maximise broadcast revenue. It would be negligent of us not to. A man of his (Ellison) stature could lift us to another level again.”
For the NRL to get an increased rights fee it needs competition for the rights. If Nine and Seven were happy to sign again for the next round of rights starting with season 2028, there is no reason for them to pay more with the absence of a third party bidding.
Indeed, they could make a strong argument that they should be paying less given the poor state of the ad market.
That’s one reason V’landys and Abdo might want to wait. If the ad market picks up in the next couple of years, a TV network will be more comfortable about increasing their spend on live sport.
Will current NRL bidders return?
The departure of Mike Sneesby from Nine is unlikely to impact the network’s desire to keep the NRL. The sport is central to the network’s offering to advertisers through the winter and there would be a massive hole without it. But one of the first things a new CEO at Nine will order is a thorough examination of how much the NRL costs, together with the production and talent costs associated with it.
Seven remains a very unlikely bidder for NRL. It has locked away AFL rights through until 2032 at great cost so it’s very unlikely to consider another massive investment for a sport at the same time of year.
The Foxtel Group has hung out for For Sale sign, so that is the main concern for Abdo and V’landys. Under News Corp management, there are great synergies between Fox Sports, Kayo Sports and the News Corp publishing properties. Those synergies vanish with a new owner of the subscription TV business.
10’s rugby league link
Rothfield recalled how Channel 10 has a rich history in rugby league, having broadcast the old midweek Amco Cup and Premiership between 1983 and 1991.
As to V’landys chances of setting up a meeting with the Ellison family in America, he told Rothfield:
“We’ll find a way. It’s no secret free-to-air TV is going to be very dependent on news, sport and reality TV because other content is going to streaming services.
“The whole future of free-to- air TV will be around sport and right now rugby league is attracting record crowds and highest TV ratings in history.
“We’re very happy with our current broadcast partners but we have to seriously look at every opportunity.”
Live sport is the new frontier for streaming services and having one of Australia’s two biggest sports would give Paramount+ a massive boost and keep it growing its footprint across Australia.
The NRL bosses have the ambition of getting a better deal for their sport than the AFL got for theirs, noted Rothfield. That means increasing the NRL TV fee of $400m annually to more than $642m annually. The AFL deal that expires this year saw Seven and Foxtel paying a combined $473m annually.
Top photo: NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo congratulates Mike Sneesby when Nine renewed its current NRL deal in 2021.
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