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Former Brisbane Broncos rugby league player Karmichael Hunt. AAP Image/Patrick Hamilton
I have hatched a brilliant and cunning plan to help the AFL finalise its quest for national (and international?) domination. Many media experts have predicted the AFL will get around $1 billion for their next TV broadcast deal starting in 2012.
While AFL house will already have ideas on how that money should be spent, I have a better one. Take $500 million and spend it all on buying the best players in the NRL.
Critically for the NRL, they do not sign their TV broadcast deal until a year later in 2013, and as we have seen in the last few years, they are a lame duck until they get it.
They will be completely defenceless to stop the AFL raids on their elite players.
From 2012 the AFL will continue to have its best players on display, while the NRL’s own crowd figures and all important TV ratings will plummet as their top 100 players will be running around in the VFL learning how to bounce a funny little red ball.
Alternatively, if the AFL’s broadcast deal in 2012 suggests the NRL might get around $1 billion themselves in 2013, as many media experts have predicted, the AFL can simply wait until 2013 to start offering contracts to the top NRL players that far exceed their market value.
The NRL can either match the AFL offers just to keep their best players – and in the process be forced to waste $500 million of their own money – or the AFL can still take the NRL players and leave the NRL with effectively a low value reserve grade competition.
But why stop with weakening their biggest rival in the NRL?
I’m sure $500 million could get you the elite 100 NRL players but also the top 10 Wallabies and the top 10 Aussies in the A –League.
With the likes of Johnathon Thurston, Greg Inglis and Jarryd Hayne running around in the VFL with Matt Giteau, Quade Cooper, Jason Culina and Michael Beauchamp, the rival codes TV ratings will soon drop off the radar.
The vast majority of all future monies available in broadcast deals will be swallowed by the AFL and the other codes will need to survive on any leftover generosity from News Ltd owned Foxtel or from the public community spirit of the ABC.
Of course, even the greatest plans come with a risk factor.
While many people in the non AFL states may find the AFL’s decision to use it’s current economic supremacy to drive its competition into the dirt as unfair and un-Australian, we all must remember that while the crippling effect on the other codes will be immediate, the transition for these fans to give up the codes their communities have loved for generations to become bona fid AFL supporters will be a long term goal.
And what the hell, even if it doesn’t work, think of the publicity it will create.
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