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Veteran Nine commentator Phil Gould predicts the rest of the NRL season will be a wipeout because it won’t satisfy the current broadcasting deal.
The league will on Thursday hold season-defining talks with Nine and Fox Sports that will decide what a restructured competition would look like should it resume.
A potential start date of May 28 has already been pencilled in by the NRL’s Project Apollo team, however Gould believes there won’t even be a liftoff.
“Personally, if you ask me, I think we’re going to struggle to get back at any time this year,” Gould said on his Six Tackles With Gus podcast.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to sustain a competition that will be anything like what was planned, or what would satisfy the broadcast agreement.”
(Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
Gould’s comments come almost a week after Nine’s extraordinary attack on NRL management, accusing the league of financial mismanagement.
It came not long after the free-to-air network declared it would save $130 million if the remainder of the season was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
There is also widespread speculation that Nine is positioning itself into forcing the NRL to open talks on a possible extension of its current broadcast deal.
ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys held a crisis meeting with Nine chief executive Hugh Marks on Tuesday. The pair will next be joined by Foxtel chief executive Patrick Delany, with the trio expected to determine how many games will be played this season. And, more importantly, how much the broadcasters will pay for them.
Gould, a two-time premiership-winning coach, claimed any re-jigged season will fall short of what Nine originally agreed to support in its broadcast deal.
“The NRL can’t provide that content at the moment,” he said.
“The NRL seems to think it can provide any sort of content over any period of time, starting and finishing whenever it can, to satisfy that agreement.
“I would think the broadcasters would disagree with that interpretation.”
© AAP
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