Buzz Rothfield: NRL’s mountain of cash might be a lot safer in clubs’ hands
YOU don’t need an accountancy degree to work out the 16 NRL clubs are absolutely entitled to be in revolt over future funding.
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You don’t need an accountancy degree to work out the 16 NRL clubs are absolutely entitled to be in revolt over future funding.
When you crunch the numbers it’s so simple and so obvious.
The NRL gets $360 million a year from the new TV broadcast contract. Throw in the lucrative State of Origin and finals tickets sales.
Add on the money from Telstra, Holden, Sportsbet and the other major sponsors. Don’t forget merchandise sales on the jerseys, flags, scarfs etc and then licensing fees on any other product that carries an NRL logo.
So let’s say conservatively the independent commission gets an annual income of $450 million. It’s probably more.
Now for the expenditure. Again, you don’t need to be a mathematical genius.
The agreement in the memorandum of understanding last year was to give clubs 30 per cent more than the salary cap.
So if the salary cap goes to $10 million (25 per cent higher than it is now), the grant to each of the 16 clubs is $13 million. That’s $208 million to the teams and the people who provide the product.
By my mathematics that leaves the NRL with $242 million each year to spend on administration, football, community, player welfare, legals, the states, grassroots, marketing and referees.
The question everyone wants answered is what is the NRL is doing with all this money.
They will soon be announcing a loss on the 2016 season.
Why?
Especially if it’s true what John Grant said on Friday that the game was going backwards.
The money aside, the NRL is facing this rebellion because Grant and the independent commission have never treated the clubs with respect.
They knew the chairmen and chairwomen were getting restless and urgently trying to finalise their funding agreements before Christmas.
Stuff them. Grant goes to Samoa for a nothing game. Then to Perth. Then to England for a month.
Todd Greenberg goes with him. The talks stall while they were following the Kangaroos.
They arrive home and withdraw the original agreement.
No warning, no consultation. Sorry guys, we did our maths wrong. Deal withdrawn.
Like the Sydney stadium debacle last year.
Every Sydney club made it clear to Grant they didn’t want and would refuse to play at a new 55,000-seat stadium in Moore Park.
The Sharks, Sea Eagles, Wests Tigers, Rabbitohs, Bulldogs and Dragons didn’t want a bar of it.
Even the Roosters didn’t want it.
Yet Dave Smith and Grant just ignored them and spent $750,000 on a feasibility study for the new Moore Park venue.
They blew the $750,000 when Premier Mike Baird rejected the proposal and went with ANZ Stadium instead.
It makes you think the money from the TV deal might be in safer hands with the clubs after all.
Think about it.
Owners and chairman of the likes of Nick Politis, Bart Campbell, James Packer, Rebecca Frizelle, Laurence Lancini, Damian Keogh, Max Donnelly and the Penn family have far more successful and impressive business backgrounds than Grant, Greenberg and most of the commissioners.
Originally published as Buzz Rothfield: NRL’s mountain of cash might be a lot safer in clubs’ hands
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