Tigerlily
Well-known member
**Peter V’landys holds talks with streaming giants over NRL content**
The Australian
Brent Read
February 27, 2020
ARL Commission chair Peter V’landys will host club bosses on Friday morning at Rugby League Central with a bad case of jetlag but a much greater understanding of the broadcasting landscape after a rapid-fire trip to the west coast of America, wherehe held talks with broadcast bosses and 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 metexecutives from streaming 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 it would be remiss of the commission not to take a closer look atthe streaming options, some of whom have begun to dabble in sport.
Only this week, Facebook — which already has deals in place to stream Major League Soccer matches, Major League Baseball andWorld Surf League events — announced a partnership with the International Cricket Council.
The biggest streaming player in recent times has arguably been Amazon Prime, which for the past two years has televised theNFL’s Thursday night football.
This year, it broke into the English Premier League market when it bought the rights to several games. 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 servicesbecome bigger players in the Australian sporting market.
V’landys’ trip to America signals an escalation in planning for broadcasting negotiations as the commission continues to mapthe way forward. On the trip, V’landys also broke bread with Fox Corp boss Lachlan Murdoch and the meeting could be seenas an indication of the regard he holds for the game’s relationship with Fox Sports, which runs until the end of 2022.
While the existing deal has a further two years to run, there is an acknowledgment that the game needs to start planning nowrather than later. V’landys and NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg have already publicly broached the idea of expanding toa 17-team competition, which would mean introducing a second team in Brisbane as early as 2023.
While no firm decision has been made, the sense is that it is a matter of when not if the announcement is made. The commissionwon’t want for interest. Clubs and consortiums are falling over themselves to become the chosen one, although money will ultimatelydictate whether expansion goes ahead.
“This time last year, I said I was concerned going into the season with our broadcasters at Nine and Fox making sure thatour ratings numbers were really strong, because if I go back to the table with them, the last thing I want to do is get backfrom a position of weakness,” Greenberg said.
“We’ve got some time on our side to understand what (the broadcasting future) looks like from 2023 and beyond. But there’sno doubt that the landscape has shifted significantly since this deal was struck back in 2015-16.”
The broadcasting agreement isn’t the only major issue on the table. V’landys and the commission are yet to strike a new dealwith Greenberg, who has a two-year option as part of his existing multi-million-dollar contract.
Both V’landys and Greenberg have insisted talks are ongoing and positive, yet time is running out if a deal is to be struckbefore the start of the premiership and the longer it takes, the more it fuels suggestions that all is not well between thechair and his chief executive.
There has been talk of tension and V’landys’ decision to head to America without the chief executive will do little to dousespeculation that the game’s powerbrokers are weighing up Greenberg’s future at the helm of what is now a $500m business.
It would border on madness to make a change now given the season is only a matter of weeks away and Greenberg’s cause wouldappear 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 indicationthat 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 Fridaymorning’s meeting, in the knowledge that the game has consistently returned big profits at the beginning of broadcasting cyclesonly to drop away after that.
The Australian
Brent Read
February 27, 2020
ARL Commission chair Peter V’landys will host club bosses on Friday morning at Rugby League Central with a bad case of jetlag but a much greater understanding of the broadcasting landscape after a rapid-fire trip to the west coast of America, wherehe held talks with broadcast bosses and 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 metexecutives from streaming 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 it would be remiss of the commission not to take a closer look atthe streaming options, some of whom have begun to dabble in sport.
Only this week, Facebook — which already has deals in place to stream Major League Soccer matches, Major League Baseball andWorld Surf League events — announced a partnership with the International Cricket Council.
The biggest streaming player in recent times has arguably been Amazon Prime, which for the past two years has televised theNFL’s Thursday night football.
This year, it broke into the English Premier League market when it bought the rights to several games. 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 servicesbecome bigger players in the Australian sporting market.
V’landys’ trip to America signals an escalation in planning for broadcasting negotiations as the commission continues to mapthe way forward. On the trip, V’landys also broke bread with Fox Corp boss Lachlan Murdoch and the meeting could be seenas an indication of the regard he holds for the game’s relationship with Fox Sports, which runs until the end of 2022.
While the existing deal has a further two years to run, there is an acknowledgment that the game needs to start planning nowrather than later. V’landys and NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg have already publicly broached the idea of expanding toa 17-team competition, which would mean introducing a second team in Brisbane as early as 2023.
While no firm decision has been made, the sense is that it is a matter of when not if the announcement is made. The commissionwon’t want for interest. Clubs and consortiums are falling over themselves to become the chosen one, although money will ultimatelydictate whether expansion goes ahead.
“This time last year, I said I was concerned going into the season with our broadcasters at Nine and Fox making sure thatour ratings numbers were really strong, because if I go back to the table with them, the last thing I want to do is get backfrom a position of weakness,” Greenberg said.
“We’ve got some time on our side to understand what (the broadcasting future) looks like from 2023 and beyond. But there’sno doubt that the landscape has shifted significantly since this deal was struck back in 2015-16.”
The broadcasting agreement isn’t the only major issue on the table. V’landys and the commission are yet to strike a new dealwith Greenberg, who has a two-year option as part of his existing multi-million-dollar contract.
Both V’landys and Greenberg have insisted talks are ongoing and positive, yet time is running out if a deal is to be struckbefore the start of the premiership and the longer it takes, the more it fuels suggestions that all is not well between thechair and his chief executive.
There has been talk of tension and V’landys’ decision to head to America without the chief executive will do little to dousespeculation that the game’s powerbrokers are weighing up Greenberg’s future at the helm of what is now a $500m business.
It would border on madness to make a change now given the season is only a matter of weeks away and Greenberg’s cause wouldappear 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 indicationthat 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 Fridaymorning’s meeting, in the knowledge that the game has consistently returned big profits at the beginning of broadcasting cyclesonly to drop away after that.
