The NRL and its free-to-air broadcast partner have sought a meeting with Foxtel before deciding the next step to resume this year’s suspended competition.
The NRL could be looking at extending its broadcast deal with the Nine Network and Fox Sports following “constructive and co-operative” crisis talks on Tuesday.
ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys left his meeting with Nine chief executive Hugh Marks buoyed at their short and long-term future.
It remains unclear what a restructured season will look like and what broadcast revenue the NRL can expect to receive this season.
However V’landys said it was made clear that Nine is committed to the game, which has been reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s a lot of detail still to be sorted out. There’s no doubt about that. There’s a lot of hard work to go under the bridge,” V’landys told AAP on Tuesday afternoon.
“But at least it’s done in good spirit and in good faith … He (Marks) put his position to me, I put my position to him. We’re not that far apart.
“We’re a little bit apart, and that’s what you do in negotiation and you try and get to the position where everyone’s happy with.
“We couldn’t have gotten more than what we did today out of the meeting.”
NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg is expected to meet with Fox Sports management, who tip in $200 million a year, on Wednesday.
V’landys, Marks, and Foxtel boss Patrick Delany will sit down on Thursday.
It is then that details of the re-jigged competition are expected to be thrashed out, while Nine is likely to raise the prospect of exclusively airing its fixtures.
V’landys insists the simulcast deal wasn’t brought up by Marks on Tuesday.
“It wasn’t part of the discussions because he knows that that’s a conversation he has to have with Fox, not with me,” he said.
The NRL will be desperate to finalise discussions as soon as possible as it attempts to resume its competition in late May.
The league’s innovations committee is pencilled in to meet on Friday, however it could be postponed if the broadcasters fail to agree on a revised season.
Tuesday’s meeting comes days after Nine launched an extraordinary attack on the NRL, accusing the game of financial mismanagement.
Some suggested the tirade was an attempt to gain leverage in an attempt to extend Nine’s current broadcast deal worth an estimated $125 million a year.
The contract is due to expire at the end of the 2022 season.
“Hugh made it very clear that Nine are committed to rugby league,” V’landys said.
“And the next step now is to get our other broadcast partner, Fox, and we’ll sit down and work out the way forward not only for this year, but for the future.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Nine commentator and former premiership-winning coach Phil Gould urged his employer and the league to discuss a long-term plan.
“I have great confidence in the NRL chairman Peter V’landys and I think their meetings will be quite significant in the future of the game,” Gould said.
“They have to work out a long-term plan as well as what they do in the short-term, and I think they are the two best people to do it.”
Hard Yards
Roar Rookie
Dear oh dear, V’Landys should learn the first rule of negotiation: when you are negotiating, you don’t tell the other bloke that you are negotiating. Is he a child ? You actually shouldn’t even be ‘negotiating’; you just have a yak while being very clear in your own mind As to what you can and can’t do, and in particular, know what the other bloke can and can’t do and where he’s getting pressure from. And you need to be clear as to when the real deadline is, because nothing happens before the deadline. When I was the boss, if one of my boys came back and told me that he had had ‘ constructive and co-operative’ talks with one of my customers, I would have given him a thick ear and thrown him out the window. I reckon someone had those sort of talks with Yamamoto just before the Japanese bombed Darwin. What a bunch of babies.