League, the clubs and the pokies

 
Joe Frost Roar Guru

By ceriseblood, 8 Jul 2011 Joe Frost is a Roar Guru

Tagged:
 , , , , , ,

127 Have your say

Related coverage



Sports Highlights

Watch more sports news video



The NRL has decided to weigh in on the proposed poker machine legislation, announcing Steve Mortimer will star in a game day campaign against the proposal to make pokies players register for a card and set daily bet limits.

The decision to get involved is one aimed at appeasing Australia’s licensed clubs (who profit so highly from pokies) as NRL CEO David Gallop explained.

“Last year, clubs ran 1,130 junior rugby league clubs, and donated $40 million to help fund the purchase of football jumpers, shorts, socks, trophies, insurance, medical kits, referee outfits and ground development,” he said.

The breakdown of Mr. Gallop’s $40 million, according to the “It’s un-Australian” website, is $25 million to NRL clubs and $15 million to junior development. Surely that should be reversed?

Mr. Mortimer, meanwhile, is not just willing to put his face on a campaign, he’s put his two cents in as well saying: “This technology on the poker machines will strip rugby league and other junior sports of hundreds of millions of dollars of support the clubs have always provided.

“Our sport would never recover from that sort of blow.”

Phil Gould has weighed in on the issue a number of times too, most recently in his Sun Herald column on Sunday June 5, 2011.

“The poker-machine taxes and newly proposed legislations are a huge problem… If you are a rugby league fan, let me tell you this government is well on the way to destroying the club and hospitality industry, your club, and game of rugby league at all levels in the Sydney metropolitan area,” he wrote.

These are a series of pretty big statements from Mortimer and Gould, although the largest would be the Bulldog saying, “Our sport would never recover,” and the Panther saying the current government is going to destroy “your club, and game of rugby league at all levels in the Sydney metropolitan area.”

So far the game has survived over 100 years, two world wars, the great depression, a decade in which only one team won the premiership (seriously, it’s held up as a golden era but wouldn’t every non-St George supporter have thought of it as the dark ages?) the Super League war and more scandals of the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll persuasion than could ever be counted.

But it will be Julia Gillard’s government that finally destroys the game (probably because she’s an AFL supporter) and right on the verge of signing a TV rights deal that is supposed to fetch upwards of $1 billion.

Of course said billion dollars has just been put that little further out of reach because when two of the game’s most prominent people make predictions of a pokie tax destroying the game, it significantly undermines the NRL’s bargaining power.

Australian TV stations aren’t going to pay top dollar for a game that’s so desperate for funding it isn’t going to survive a change in poker machine legislation.

The reality is rugby league isn’t going to die by people putting less money through the pokies because the game has various streams of revenue that have evolved with the times.

Legend goes the South Sydney Rabbitohs got their club name because the players used to sell rabbit meat to the people of South Sydney to supplement their incomes – in fact, depending on which version of history you read, the rabbits may have been alive and the player would kill it fresh for the customer.

From 1960 to 1995, the NSWRL (and ARL for one season) was sponsored by cigarette companies – firstly as the W. D. and H. O. Wills Cup and then the Winfield Cup from 1982 and, of course, these days it’s the media rights which bring in the big bucks.

So let’s assume the billion dollar deal does get done and all of a sudden the NRL are in a situation where their operating budget has doubled.

Perhaps they could use some of that sexy new money to do what they encourage so many of their athletes do when their long and lucrative career has run its course – give something back.

In fact, they don’t need to give back per se, just stop putting their hand out for money from the clubs and instead use the money from the media rights deal to fund the $40 million the clubs have contributed until this point, giving the clubs $40 million a year to help restructure.

And restructuring is all the clubs need – in the media release in which ClubsAustralia complain about what the pokie reforms are going to do to their bottom line they also crow about how they have supported rugby league for nearly 100 years.

Since pokies were only legalised in NSW in 1956, clubs must have had other streams of revenue for the first 50 years they supported the game?

Membership fees, club restaurants, live entertainment and alcohol contribute a bucket-load towards a clubs’ bottom line, and if a reduction in poker machine gambling is going to send a club under, it’s probably not in a position to be giving money to an NRL club.

Wild Turkey - find out more
The Turkey 10

The Turkey 10 teams have now been selected, as Wild Turkey Bourbon's sport sponsorship kicks into the next exciting phase.

Choose which side you're going to support and get in the running to win $2,500!

Simply visit Wild Turkey Australia on Facebook for your chance to win.

Find out more.

Get a daily rugby league email

Our daily emails are only sent if there is content for the sport. You can subscribe to multiple daily emails; or get the daily Roar email with all our content in it.

We value privacy. More.