Selling State of Origin games to other markets will prove costly for Queensland
TODD Greenberg’s determination to sell an Origin game a year to state governments will handicap the Maroons, writes PAUL MALONE.
TODD Greenberg’s determination to sell an Origin game a year to state governments will handicap the Maroons as Kevin Walters takes them further from the Mal Meninga era.
After Queensland’s clear-eyed 22-6 win on Wednesday night, NSW has still won only two Origin deciders at Lang Park and Suncorp Stadium in 36 series since the first three-game campaign in 1982.
Melbourne and Perth get games in 2018 and 2019 respectively and NRL CEO Greenberg wants to maximise income from Origin — which takes the form of multi-million dollar match fees paid by the Victorian and West Australian governments — into the future.
The NRL insisted that match allocations during series will “continue to alternate between NSW and Queensland’’ in years when one of the three match is played in a neutral state or overseas.
“There will not be more Game Threes up there,’’ an NRL spokesman said.
Whether dead rubber crowds at ANZ Stadium see that sustain remains to be seen.
The NRL managed to get 61,267 to a dead rubber at 80,000-capacity ANZ Stadium last year with the aid of reduced ticket prices.
The previous dead rubber at ANZ Stadium in 2010 drew 61,259, making it a costly exercise for the NRL, which can command a stronger yield financially at Suncorp Stadium because a comparatively higher ticket price can be demanded than at the Sydney ground.
No Origin games have been promised to anyone in 2020 and beyond because of the various tiresome power plays in NSW politics and Sydney’s stadium politics preventing the NRL getting a straight answer on a date for the renovation of ANZ Stadium and how long it will be unavailable.
Next year’s Origin I will be at the Melbourne Cricket Ground rather than the Game Two appointment which had been expected. Expect Suncorp Stadium to be given Game Three most years, with Sydney given one of the first two, and this comes with an upside and a downside for the Maroons.
The upside for Queensland is that Maroons fans have shown they are far more likely to buy all 52,500 tickets for a Suncorp Stadium match for a dead rubber than Sydneysiders wanting to make the commute to and from ANZ Stadium. Game Threes can also be deciders — only four of the past 10 years have seen one side win the first two matches to clinch the titles.
The downside is that the Maroons would have to win one of the first two matches, most probably in Sydney and a capital city from a non-competing state (under the NRL policy), to make Game Three at Suncorp Stadium a live game.
Even a blue-eyed NSW supporter be loath to say Queensland teams can’t do anything on the basis of the 2017 success with eight first-time Maroons players, but it doesn’t make it any easier.
I took Greenberg’s temperature before Game One on whether he was still convinced that taking games away from the most engaged fans of Queensland and NSW every year — and that’s my argument, he wants to do it every year — to find it had not changed.
QRL chairman Bruce Hatcher told The Courier-Mail on Tuesday that the enthusiasm of Queenslanders to buy the vast bulk of the 103,000 Origin tickets sold for the two Suncorp Stadium days firmly showed that this state deserved the chance to host two games a year in the not too distant future and on a regular basis. As does, I’d suggest, NSW.
Incidentally, the NRL advised today that pre-sale tickets for Origin I on June 6 next year would be available to NRL subscribers and other stakeholders on Wednesday. By my maths, that amounts to holding money for 45 weeks before the match is delivered.
It puts to shame rock tour promoters when it comes to getting lovely interest on purchases.
But the NRL clearly believes they have such a juggernaut in Origin rugby league that they can ask state governments and the paying public to dance to their tune.
Originally published as Selling State of Origin games to other markets will prove costly for Queensland
Watch Maroons legend’s shock confession: ‘I could have died’
As Queensland’s most storied band of misfits gathered to celebrate their famous Origin whitewash in 1995, captain Trevor Gillmeister revealed he risked death if he took the field in Game III - he did anyway.
Maroons legend signs on as Queensland under-19s coach
The winds of change are sweeping through the Maroons system, with a Queensland legend handed the reins of the under-19s team as the QRL ramps up its plan to develop more Origin coaches.