Sydney Roosters well behind Storm, Broncos in NRL third-party deals
Evidence shows Sydney Roosters have powered their way into NRL history despite playing with a paltry amount of third-party sponsorship deals.
NRL
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Here’s the proof the Sydney Roosters’ so-called salary cap “sombrero” is a myth.
Because the NRL’s own evidence has revealed that the all-conquering back-to-back premiers have done it the hard way, powering their way into rugby league history despite playing with a paltry amount of third-party sponsorship deals.
Incredibly, the star-studded Roosters ranked 11th overall in the league after pulling in a combined total of $68,966 in “private sector arms-length agreements”.
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That was astonishingly less than 1/10th of what the No.1 ranked Melbourne Storm players received in bonuses totalling $809,998 this year.
In fact, the Roosters’ total was even down on their previous year’s tally.
Most likely, these statistics the NRL revealed on Friday will probably only give salary cap sceptics more ammunition to have a crack at Trent Robinson’s roster and ask, how is this possible?
But what this list also highlights is the significant advantage one-city clubs like Melbourne and Brisbane have over their rivals.
It should be pointed out that these figures do not include money paid to players from NRL-aligned corporate partners including Fox Sports, Channel 9, Telstra and KFC, and all deals are done independently with no club involvement.
This basically means the individual deals players such as Cooper Cronk, Boyd Cordner or James Tedesco might have with these ‘whole of game’ sponsors are not included in this list, which would significantly bump up the Roosters’ overall tally.
The Broncos were second overall ($349,852) while Penrith came in third ($233,333) followed by Cronulla ($211,952) and South Sydney ($198,591).
Newcastle was next ($181,275) followed by Manly was next ($148,718), Wests Tigers ($132,458), St George Illawarra ($82,951), Parramatta ($80,166), the Roosters, Canterbury ($59,680), grand finalists Canberra ($45,333), Warriors ($27,591), Gold Coast ($18,153) while astonishingly North Queensland was last ($15,667).
Perhaps not surprisingly given last summer’s “train wreck” of off-field scandals, the NRL also revealed that overall third party agreements were down significantly.
They plummeted from $7.8 million in 2018 to $6 million this year, while the private sector agreements were also down from $4.2 million overall to just $2.7 million.
Another significant factor in the decline would have related to the retirement of superstars such as Billy Slater and Johnathan Thurston, which the margins indicate came at a significant cost to their club’s overall tallies.
The Storm were down $200,000 on 2018 while the Cowboys nosedived by about $350,000 in private agreements after losing Thurston.
The total number of agreements was also down from 205 to 171, the number of player agreements was down from 94 to 81 and the club average was down from $264,000 to $166,000.
Despite this the NRL believe these figures should give fans faith that the policing of all third party payments is working better than ever before.
NRL chief operating officer Nick Weeks explained: “We recognised the genuine concerns our clubs and fans had about third-party agreements.
“That’s why we introduced more strenuous measures to ensure these agreements are genuine arms-length deals.
“We are confident that this level of transparency about third-party agreements will improve confidence in the effective operation of the salary cap and reduce the amount of speculation and guess work about this part of the game.”
Originally published as Sydney Roosters well behind Storm, Broncos in NRL third-party deals