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In the first of a two-part interview, NRL media and communications director John Brady talks expansion – and why the NRL won’t be jumping the gun on adding new teams if this would compromise the evenness which has underpinned recent success.
Expansion has been the word on everyone’s lips in Australian football circles over the past two years.
The AFL, chequebooks at the ready, has launched an audacious bid to target key rugby league markets in south-east Queensland and Western Sydney.
Super Rugby, after bringing in the Western Force, has now broadened into Melbourne. And soccer’s embryonic A-League has thrown caution to the wind, adding new teams in Queensland and Melbourne and getting set for a new Sydney outfit despite a litany of financial concerns at existing clubs.
By contrast, the NRL – after resurrecting the Gold Coast in 2007 – has displayed what some detractors would characterise as an overabundance of caution.
But for NRL media and communications director John Brady, the fact that there are clear opportunities for adding new teams on the Central Coast, Queensland, Perth and New Zealand – some of which would help to truly justify that ‘National’ moniker – is only half the story. (The full transcript of the interview is available here.)
In fact, according to Brady, the NRL has “a certain amount of reservation about the ‘dot in the map’ theory”.
“The game’s focus is on broadening its interaction with fans. But that may or may not be by being in new areas. And it may not always mean by bringing in new teams.”
For the NRL, the cornerstone of its broad strategic objectives remains the same: ensuring that it has the structures in place to ensure the even competitions which have driven strong crowds and ratings growth over recent years.
The NRL’s primary aim, Brady says, is “to build a competition that people want to follow, because of the excitement that it produces, and the talent that it produces, and because of how close it can be.”
“It’s not that you don’t expand at any stage. But your expansion can’t risk that.”
The troubled recent history of NRL expansion – with a number of frontier teams failing or being forced out in the aftermath of the Super League war – means that the game’s administrators could justifiably be a touch gun-shy.
But Brady is adamant that the League has emerged from earlier troubles bearing lessons, not scars.
And from that point of view, the addition of the Gold Coast to the NRL in 2007 after a long campaign for re-admission is a case in point.
Originally, the Titans “wanted to come in at a time when we weren’t looking to expand”, says Brady. “We knocked them back many times over because their bid needed strengthening. At the time, the NRL… wasn’t going to introduce a team until it got a better look at its medium term revenue.”
With an expanded television broadcast contract delivering more certainty around funding, the Titans eventually got the nod – at a time when both they and the NRL were in a much better position to capitalise on the game’s strength.
“Had the Titans come in a year early – even though our comp was going ok – when funding levels were less secure, when the Titans were still [only] almost there with a business case but didn’t have a team or a stadium and may have taken a few years to get one, I doubt they would have survived that first period. [Ultimately], they came in at a time when they were very strong.”
Brady’s formula for expansion is this: “the new team has to be able to bring value to the competition, both in terms of the amount of money the competition can generate as well as competition on the field. At the same time it’s got to come in at a time where the competition can bring value to the new team.”
Proponents of expansion would argue that with crowds and ratings up and a number of potentially convincing bids in the works, now is the perfect time to look at expansion again. And Brady agrees that upcoming TV broadcast rights negotiations provide the perfect opportunity for again looking at expanding the NRL’s frontiers. But he reiterates that it isn’t simply a matter of more games equaling more dollars from sports broadcasters.
“Most people think more games mean more money,” says Brady, “but the truth is that’s not the case. The strength of this competition and this era of the NRL has been to always have more good games. More good games doesn’t necessarily mean more games overall.”
“If you go back a few years in rugby league – and in other competitions today – you would have teams that are no hope of winning the competition and matches that were pretty predictable.”
“The thing that makes value for sports broadcasting is to have a good contest almost every time. That’s what attracts audiences. It’s not about attracting air time, it’s about attracting audiences and having people want to watch it.”
“So simply putting some more on isn’t going to guarantee you more money, putting on something people want to watch is.”
“That balance is established pretty well over the last few years. So if you bring a new team in, it’s got to be on the basis that you’re able to maintain it”.
What all this reinforces is that while the NRL is certain to look very carefully at all expansion options during negotiations for the next TV deal, any potential broadening of the competition will be heavily scrutinized.
Prospective bids will have to comprehensively demonstrate that they have the financial resources and the business nous to compete, unsubsidised, on a level playing field with existing clubs.
And for all the zeal surrounding expansion in some sections of the NRL community, most fans would agree that this is the way it should be to gain admission into an elite professional football competition.
The danger, according to Brady, is to say “’we’ve got to put a team there because a team will work there, regardless of whether it suits the competition, regardless of who’s running that team, regardless of all the factors”.
That is sentiment which wouldn’t be lost on some other sporting administrators currently grappling with the consequences of a headlong rush towards expansion.
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