On Saturday night, I found myself in the Ballsbridge area of Dublin.
If you know Dublin at all, you’ll know that Ballsbridge is considered quite well-to-do and that it is the location of Aviva Stadium, home of the very successful Irish rugby union team.
And if you know rugby union, you’ll know that on Saturday night it would have been heaving with fans after an Ireland-Italy World Cup warm-up.
While supping on the black stuff, I met a lovely pair of retired ladies who were about to support Ireland in Japan
Now, if you’ve read this column before you can probably predict what I’m going to say next: why don’t we package up our World Cup warm-ups the way they do? In Europe, anyway, the 15-a-side World Cup warm-ups are a cohesive thing – there are posters outside pubs saying ‘come and see the World Cup warm-ups here’.
It seems sensible that try our own small, modest version of the concept two years from now.
And, if you’ve been a reader for some time, you’ll now expect me to go onto one my other rants about pre-season NRL and Super League games also being sponsor-able and broadcast-able and how our wonderful athletes shouldn’t cross a sideline without the event being commercially leveraged.
One of my hobby horses, that one. Yawn.
But there’s another layer – maybe two – to this discussion.
The obvious retort to my suggestions above is that events aren’t big enough. Last World Cup, the United States beat France and Italy beat England in the prelims (not qualifiers – friendlies immediately before the tournament) but they were in front of small crowds, not 30,000 people at flash stadia.
Most Super League regular season games aren’t televised so it’s jumping the gun to suggest pre-season friendlies should be.
And the NRL, in concert with existing broadcasters, have their pre-season nailed down. Perhaps it could be sold to sponsors – the Downer Pre-season perhaps – but from a broadcast point of view it’s well in-hand.
And then there are business and commercial concerns that we members of the public never have to think about.
Perhaps the NRL would rather sell another pre-season property to Downer or someone else and by creating a new property that would be cheaper, they would undercut themselves.
Channel Ten probably wouldn’t show the NRL pre-season for free because they’d just be convincing viewers to watch Nine for the rest of the year. If a streaming service used Optus, anyone involved in Australian rugby league might be contractually required to stay away because of the sport’s relationship with Telstra.
It’s a sad fact of life as a sports fan that it often makes as much commercial sense to stop you watching something as it does to facilitate your viewership.
Could pre-season fixtures get their own following? (AAP Image/SNPA, Teaukura Moetaua)
Sky in the UK have access to 13 games a weekend – all of Super League and the Championship – but only choose to show two or three. Yet if someone else came along and wanted to produce another game, that production would automatically belong to Sky and they could stop it happening at all.
They don’t have to pay for Wolfpack games – they already owned the Championship but just chose not to show it. So when the club comes along and produces it for them, Sky automatically own that content already.
In the real world of broadcasting, it’s not a case of “how do we get this game to the viewer?”
It’s “how do we make money from this telecast and not break an existing contract?”. Many times, you can do the former but not the latter – so the game is never shown.
But I often wonder if there is yet another factor at play, beyond rugby league not being popular and lucrative enough yet (“we’ll get there eventually”) and complicated and restrictive contracts.
I wonder if, as a game which pitches itself below the top demographics in society, that the bar of “commercial viability” is set higher.
When you’re not getting Mercedes and Qantas and Chivas Regal on board because market research says those companies’ potential customers don’t like league, your options for producing content and staging events are reduced. If one of them wanted to sponsor a World Cup warm-ups series (hell, play a whole weekend of games at stadium in Asia or the Middle East), then that series could happen.
If it’s Bunnings and Bachelors Mushy Peas, the event does not happen.
And I also wonder whether Australia’s dominance of rugby league culture also retards this natural evolution of commercial opportunities, that some things might not happen “eventually” because of this unique situation.
Australia is the sport’s biggest media market. In Australia, international league properties are growing but small because of a widespread belief that the domestic product is superior.
Using the World Cup warm-ups as an example again, if you have a 24-hour station covering another sport – anywhere in the world – it is inconceivable they would not even be interested in showing such matches.
In Australia, the NRL rather than international league dominates. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
But it is conceivable – it may not be right in the fullness of time, but you can imagine it – that Fox League might not be terribly keen on showing international league trials because international league is perceived in Australia to be second class.
And if you can’t rely on your best-resourced media market to invest in internationals, you are at the same disadvantage that you find yourself by not having premium brands wanting to sponsor you.
So the rules don’t apply equally across all sports based purely on numbers of eyeballs.
History, culture, geography and demographics play a significant role and unfortunately for rugby league, it finds itself on the wrong side of a lot of these equations.
Tony Monero
Guest
Live sport being the last domain of TV, should focus on whatever it can obtain for its content, especially if they already own it. The broadcasters should just show it and increase the number of sporting channels. Allowing them to see more ads. They could have a ‘rugby’ channel which shows all versions, 7s 9s 13s and 15s, female and male. To cross promote to either brand.
jimmystagger
Roar Rookie
Rugby union is a miniscule niche sport that 99% of Americans have never seen played (I say this as someone who's from a "heartland"- Massachusetts- and has been to dozens of club games and supported London Irish for years now). The "difference" rugby league offers is it's very similar to our football, it's fast, it's not played at the same time as our football, and it's easy to pick up. The old Spike TV network (now the Paramount Network) showed the NRL playoffs here back in 2009 and sitting in bars in Boston (I was much younger then haha) people would go "ohhhhhhhhhhhhh" at the hits and the speed. There was no follow up, the NRL never came here to play games, and the league is now on a channel (Fox Soccer Plus) that nobody gets, so it never went anywhere- but let me tell you you could sell rugby league to Americans if it was presented as a professional sport.
jimmystagger
Roar Rookie
Rugby union in colleges here did little to nothing to grow the game. The 2,000+ amateur clubs from coast to coast did nothing to grow the game, because they have no money and are basically recreational. Only the very recent development of having a "professional" (actually semi-pro) competition and getting games has done anything for rugby union in the US. This is not a grassroots nation, this is a top down nation. You put pro teams in, then kids want to play (look at the NHL in Arizona or Nashville).
jimmystagger
Roar Rookie
Rugby union did nothing for 100 years here except drink swimming pools of beer, which is fine but let's not make it sound like some kind of juggernaut. The federation is a financial shambles, the college game isn't governed by the NCAA but by said broke federation, national team games are hidden behind the Flo Rugby paywall so new fans aren't watching and highlights don't make SportsCenter thusly, the Sevens RWC was so poorly run it was downsized from two planned stadiums to one, and 7's coach Mike Friday regularly bemoans the fact his players are on "poverty" wages. Clubs finally getting together and setting up a league themselves, Major League Rugby (which is basically semi-pro), is what's finally gotten things rolling to a degree. Go check out Psalm Wooching's Twitter for his (accurate) critiques of USAR's shortcomings. The highest attendance for a USA Rugby game not involving New Zealand was 2016 in New Jersey vs Ireland and it was reported at 22k (which, let me tell, was generous). Denver Test attendance was within touching distance of that, at 19k. If rugby league got it's act together and put some professional teams here paying decent money it would leapfrog MLR. There's room for both codes here in a nation of 320+M, but RU isn't the giant it is other places.
Justin Kearney
Roar Rookie
Another droll cynical effort clip. We expect nothing else from the afl fanboy!
Censored Often
Roar Rookie
So Australia got it wrong for selecting a player who wasn't born here to represent the Kangaroos but you applaud two other players for turning their backs on their country of birth to represent another country?
terrence
Roar Rookie
international rubbish?
clipper
Roar Rookie
How patient should they be? France has dwindled so much it can't even get out of the pools, England has declined, it's less competitive internationally than it was 50-60 years ago, save for a couple of countries that have ex NRL players in them.
bbt
Guest
I think the growth of the game is operating at the speed it should. The comment re the growth of Rugby in the USA via the universities is an example of organic growth leading to greater acceptance. You cannot rush these things. Having dodgy promoters offering the world is not the way to get a grassroots foundation. The RLEF is doing an excellent job of slowly growing the game in Europe and Africa. It will happen - just be patient.
terrence
Roar Rookie
i think the spread, or rather growth, of rugby union around the globe had a lot to do with colonialism and the british empire..the seeds were already there..they just needed to make the sport professional..
Munro Mike
Roar Rookie
"The reason why rugby league will never be a true international sport is because it has not done the spadework. A good example of what is required is the rise of rugby in the US" And when I read this I thinks to me-self.....another reason is that when your biggest game is American Football (a Rugby variant played on a rectangle field with 2 opposing lines in a tackle oriented game with 'touch downs', 'field goals' and conversion goals etc.....and you've got Rugby (Union) played on a rectangular pitch with 2 opposing lines in a tackle oriented game with 'trys' (touch downs), 'field goals' and conversion goals etc......and you're trying to sell Rugby League into such a market and I'd suggest it's a hard sell. What's the point of difference??
Ben
Guest
If the nrl wanted to at least attempt to grow internationally then maybe they should make legibility criteria for representing Australia tighter. Semi as a prime example. There is some talents out there I would have assumed should be representing a different nation. We all knew nz had been leaving the islands thin, and they probably could have fielded competitive teams for a while now but they were always for nz. I applaud Taumalolo and A Fifita for their move and hope more follow suit. I hope the State of Origin game merges with NZ and the islands and that is all the rep footy I think is needed. SOO is tired for me as it is. Realistically where else are you hoping to grow? In terms of international audience, fix the rules so everyone is on the same page. I can only imagine the confusion new supporters must feel when watching the game, surely a big deterrent.
Paul
Roar Guru
Sooner rather than later, the NRL needs to realize the future of people watching rugby league won't be on televisions but on laptops, phones or screens that are connected to computers. Streaming sports world side opens up a raft of advertising opportunities, including those at the high end, just not necessarily in Australia. It obviously opens up the game to a much bigger audience and if people overseas enjoy the game as much as millions of Australians do, both the advertising dollars and the game's expansion would largely take care of themselves.
Andrew Quinn
Guest
I admire your tenacity in trying to get rugby league to the world but the horse has bolted. Compared to rugby, league is just a curious anomaly, a bit like Gaelic football. The problem is that by looking outward too much, those who run the game will miss what is happening at home, that AFL with oodles of money to spend and nothing to spend it on but promoting itself locally, will become the number one winter sport in Australia and rugby league a historical curious anomaly. The reason why rugby league will never be a true international sport is because it has not done the spadework. A good example of what is required is the rise of rugby in the US. Decades, even a hundred years, of development starting in universities has lead to rugby sevens being the fastest growing sport in the US. The US men's sevens team is ranked number two behind Fiji, ahead of New Zealand, genuine Olympic gold medal chances. The XV side, once equal with Canada, has now moved to the next level to be competitive with second ranked national sides like Japan. It took a hundred years to be an overnight success.
Paul
Guest
But the local competition and State of Origin is superior and well ahead of the International rubbish. 99% of Rugby League people know this