Comment: How Sydney clubs hurt Brisbane rugby league fans

Data shows Brisbane is ready for a second rugby league team, but the NRL is wasting a glorious chance to crush their opposition. Peter Badel reveals what they must do to capitalise.

When Todd Greenberg flew to Queensland in November for the launch of this year’s Magic Round at Suncorp Stadium, the NRL chief executive was asked if Brisbane will ever see a second NRL team.

The sharp, articulate Greenberg, as verbally nimble as a United Nations diplomat, chose his words carefully and strategically.

“The real question is do you want to expand the competition or do you want to relocate teams?” he said.

“That’s an open question for us … and at the moment, we haven’t answered it.”

Sooner rather than later, rugby league’s decision-makers need to get their left hand on the same page as their right.

Last year, ARL Commission chairman Peter Beattie warned the code had to expand or risk dying.

Yet the NRL, weighed down by myopic, cash-strapped Sydney clubs who annually raid the code’s coffers like a self-entitled teenager sucking money from their parents, understandably want financial certainty for the 16 clubs before wading into the murky waters of expansion.

The problem is this: history shows league clubs, notably the Sydney ones, do not make money. Worse, they haemorrhage millions.

NRL boss Todd Greenberg. Picture: AAP

Currently, the Broncos and Cowboys — two Queensland teams — are the code’s only profitable entities.

No matter how generous the NRL grant, no matter how responsible Greenberg and the code’s governors attempt to be, there will be lunatics among the Sydney clubs seeking to run the asylum.

Based on that measurement and sentiment, Brisbane, sadly, will never see a second NRL team.

If financial certainty in Sydney is the Sunshine State’s only guaranteed gateway to a second NRL licence in south-east Queensland, well … don’t hold your breath.

Under the current television deal, no expansion can happen until 2023. By then, the Broncos will have gone unchallenged for 26 years since the Super League-fuelled demise of the South Queensland Crushers in 1997.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Brisbane metropolitan area is home to 2.4 million people.

The southeast Queensland region features an estimated 3.5 million residents.

Yet despite such a huge reservoir of fans, league’s bosses are content to dither, even though their direct sporting rivals are floundering in the Sunshine State.

The AFL’s Brisbane Lions are a skeleton of the powerhouse that won a hat-trick of flags in 2001-03.

Football’s Brisbane Roar have seen crowds drop 34 per cent in the past 12 months.

Rugby’s Reds — once a genuine threat to the Broncos on the scale of crowd figures — have lost major traction in a code that has lost its marbles.

Now is the time for the NRL to crush its opposition. The ARL Commission should kill off two Sydney clubs and hand licences to Brisbane and Perth for the next TV deal.

Decluttering the Sydney market would not only help its remaining seven teams swim out of the red ink, but enable Queensland to truly thrive as part of a burgeoning national footprint.

Fears that a second Brisbane team would suffer the same fate as the Crushers are unfounded. When the Brisbane Bombers launched their expansion bid in December 2010, they crunched some numbers.

The data forecasted a second Brisbane team would turn a profit … in its first season.

“Brisbane is as ready now for a second team as it’s ever been,” says Bombers shareholder Nick Livermore, whose father Ross was the long-serving boss of the Queensland Rugby League.

Brisbane Bombers shareholder Nick Livermore. Picture: Liam Kidston.

“With crowds of 24,000, a second Brisbane team would make a $1 million profit.

“And that’s not factoring in the NRL grant, which is now greater than the salary cap.’’

Livermore praised the Magic Round concept, but says it won’t ease the code’s major migraine — the financial impotence of Sydney clubs.

“At what point does the NRL really put pressure on Sydney clubs to be self-sufficient and sustainable?” he said.

“Wests Tigers’ average crowd last year was lower than when they won the competition in 2005.

“Sydney’s population has grown over the last 14 years but the Tigers’ crowds have gone backwards.

“Why should they be in the competition? What do they bring? How will the state of the NRL be different in 2023 compared to 2013 or 2018?

“A second Brisbane team would instantly be more profitable than every Sydney team.

“At this rate, it could be 30 years before Brisbane gets another team, which is a really sad state of affairs.”

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Originally published as Comment: How Sydney clubs hurt Brisbane rugby league fans