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Opinion
The NRL is on track to expand to 17 teams, with the addition of another Brisbane club looking probable by 2023.
While the ARLC seems intent on this course and could make a decision as early as June this year, there is a better option for expansion: a second division.
I propose a fully professional second division, called the ARL Championship, consisting of the following ten clubs.
ARL Championship
PNG Hunters
Redcliffe Dolphins
Brisbane Tigers or Firehawks
Ipswich Jets
Sunshine Coast Falcons
North Sydney Bears
Newtown Jets
Western Suburbs Magpies
Illawarra Steelers
Perth
The Newtown Jets have a place in this proposed competition. (Photo: Kris Swales)
While the exact make-up of the league could be up for debate, the broad idea is to include clubs who either have ambitions of playing in the NRL or have a history in the top flight, as well as clubs from areas not currently represented in the NRL.
To keep start-up costs low, priority should be given to existing clubs, with Perth the only brand new side involved. In order to capture the imagination of the broader rugby league public it would be important to have decent representation from the two main rugby league cities of Sydney and Brisbane.
In time the league could look to expand to places like Fiji, Wellington, Adelaide, Central Queensland and country NSW.
The obvious question is: would the Championship be feasible? Let’s look at the numbers.
The league would have a salary cap of $1.5 million, with annual operating costs of around $2.5-3 million per club. To put these numbers into perspective, the semi-professional Intrust Super Queensland Cup has a salary cap of $500,000 with clubs spending up to $1 million per year to run a side.
At the other end of the scale, the NRL has a $9 million salary cap with annual operating costs somewhere in the range of $15-25 million per club. In the English Super League the salary cap is £2.1 million ($3.8 million). Given that the Championship would sit in quality somewhere between the existing semi-professional state leagues and the Super League, a salary cap of $1.5 million seems realistic.
Where would the money come from? The ARLC would need to provide a club grant to cover some of the costs, ideally $1.5 million annually to match the salary cap. At the moment the ARLC pays state league clubs $500,000, so it’s not a huge stretch to imagine a payment of that size. Clubs would need to raise the additional $1-1.5 million required through match-day earnings, sponsorships, membership dues, leagues club support and benefactors.
Travel costs would also need to be considered, which would amount to something like $150,000 per year for each club or $1.5 million for the whole league. In 2019, travel costs for the NRL competition amounted to $2.8 million, which was paid centrally to remove any financial disadvantage to clubs who travel more. The same idea should apply to the Championship.
Could we see a PNG team in an NRL second division? (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
If the NRL is stumping up around $11-12 million per year in new costs for the Championship, they are going to want something for it. In time, the Championship would prove to be a valuable product in and of itself.
Television ratings could well be comparable to the A-League or Super Rugby. Viewership figures for the A-League this season have seen national audiences in the region of 40,000-50,000 for free-to-air matches on the ABC and 15,000 for matches on Foxtel. While those numbers pale in comparison to ratings for the NRL and AFL, the A-League still managed to recently sign a $40 million per year television deal.
There is evidence that the Championship could generate respectable television ratings. In 2019 when Channel 9 broadcast the NSW and Queensland Cup games on Sunday afternoons, average ratings across the season were 25,000 viewers per game in Sydney and 17,000 viewers per game in Brisbane.
With a step up in professionalism and quality, a stable broadcast schedule and greater promotion, the Championship could well achieve national ratings of 50,000-100,000 in a similar time slot. With multiple streaming services now competing with free-to-air and pay TV for viewers and content, the Championship could secure a broadcast deal to pay for itself.
The ARL Championship would provide a proving ground for teams who aspire to join the NRL. The perfect way to determine which new Brisbane side should get the nod is to see how they perform in the Championship. How many supporters are they getting through the gate, and what sort of community support have they generated? How have they performed on the field?
It would breathe life into foundation clubs like Newtown and the Bears, who claim to have hundreds of thousands of supporters still nursing the wounds of their demise in 1999. It would give the PNG Hunters – who have the support of an entire league-mad country behind them and have home crowds bigger than some NRL clubs – a bigger and better platform.
The Championship would be a great way to expand the NRL. I’m not sure how likely it is to happen, but it would be feasible and I’d certainly love to see it.
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