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New Seven Network boss James Warburton is gearing up to make a serious play for NRL broadcasting rights to increase its market share in Sydney and Brisbane.
In the boldest move yet by the Seven West Media chief executive since taking the job in August, The Australian understands Seven will make a considered push to steal the NRL rights from Nine Entertainment, with the current deals for both rugby league and AFL set to expire at the end of 2022 and negotiations for new deals to begin over the next year.
Asked directly whether Seven would compete for the NRL free-to-air rights in 2023, Mr Warburton said he was interested.
“News and live sport are central to our DNA,” he said. “We’d be interested in looking at rights when the time is right.”
It is understood that Seven has reached out to the NRL to express an interest in gaining the rights as part of an attempt to capture greater market share in Sydney and Brisbane, in a move that could end its long association with televising the AFL.
Mr Warburton said he had “a good relationship” with New Australian Rugby League chairman Peter V’landys through his role as Racing NSW chief executive and had a “very good relationship” with NRL boss Todd Greenberg, and “would be interested in talking to them when the time is right”.
The Seven boss said holding onto the AFL would be his preference but he floated the idea of taking the State of Origin series if full NRL rights could not be achieved.
“The numbers have been pretty spectacular across the board for the AFL, so I think the number one winter sport is the AFL. So if you had to choose, you’d choose the AFL. Which is not to say that you wouldn’t want to do more in Sydney or Brisbane with NRL, or you wouldn’t want to look at something like the State of Origin series.”
There is also increasing speculation that the NRL may attempt to handle its broadcast production in-house as this would allow it to sell off individual fixtures, although Mr Warburton — who has experience with the in-house model during his time running Supercars — was unfazed.
“So all that stuff doesn’t really sway it one way or the other. It comes back to what are your rights and where’s your exclusivity.”
The AFL is by far the highest-rating football code nationally and in the metros but it struggles to rate in Sydney and Brisbane.
OzTam free-to-air ratings figures show average audiences for regular games for the AFL in Sydney in 2018 and 2019 were 31,000 and 32,000 respectively. In Brisbane they attracted 20,000 and 30,000 people on average in 2018 and 2019.
This compares with average NRL audiences on Nine in Sydney of 175,000 and 167,000 and 108,000 each year in Brisbane.
NRL similarly struggles in the AFL heartland of Melbourne, with average audiences of just 15,000 and 20,000 on free-to-air regular season matches.
The present AFL deal is worth $2.5bn, while the NRL deal is worth just under $2bn.
Under that NRL deal negotiated at the end of 2015, Nine paid $650m for free-to-air rights, News Corp (publisher of The Australian) paid $900m, Telstra $150m and international rights were $75m to $100m.
Fox Sports shows every game, and the Thursday and Friday night and Sunday afternoon matches on free-to-air. The grand final and State of Origin remain strictly on free-to-air.
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