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Rugby Australia considering new competition for broadcasters
By Online Editors
Rugby Australia will investigate forming a new national club competition, but won't settle on a format until the next broadcasting rights deal is signed.
RA revealed the strategy after a News Corp Australia report claimed a two-division national club competition could be part of the 'whole of rugby' package to be presented to broadcasters.
"Rugby Australia wishes to confirm that it has investigated the establishment of a national club competition ahead of its media rights negotiations," RA said in a statement issued on Thursday.
"However the final competition format will not be determined until further consultation with the successful broadcaster, the state and territory member unions, and the clubs."
Fox Sports has held the rights to the majority of major Australian rugby content since the professional era started in 1996, heralded by the introduction of the Tri-Nations and Super Rugby tournaments.
Castle remains confident Fox Sports hasn’t walked away and expects the broadcaster to bid for TV rights next month.
Castle is taking rugby’s broadcast rights to market for the first time since rugby went professional in 1996, in a move that will have a huge impact on the game’s future.
It was reported Fox Sports had ended their 25-year relationship with the code after RA rejected their offer for the rights package from 2021 to 2025.
But Castle is confident the pay-TV company will come back to the table.
“We went through a negotiating process with them (Fox Sports) through their exclusive negotiating period,” Castle said.
“Unfortunately we couldn’t get to a place we were both comfortable with. So now we’re in tender and we would expect that as a market process they would step into that process.”
RA chairman Cameron Clyne and vice-chairman Brett Robinson will stand down from the board on March 30 and former Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O’Neill believes the new board shouldn’t inherit their TV deal.
Castle confirmed Clyne would continue to work on broadcast negotiations before he departs and said she didn’t think O’Neill’s comments were fair.
“This is a decision that is about generating the most financially beneficial outcome we can for the game,” Castle told reporters at the Super W launch.
AAP
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Latest Comments
Turn it up. Give me your john A game would ya!
Go to commentsI didn't really get the should tone from it, but maybe because I was just reading it as my own thoughts.
What I read it as was examples of how they played well enough in every game to be able to win it.
Yeah I dunno if Ben wouldn't see it that way (someone else would for sure need to point it out to him though), I'm more in the Ben not appreciating that those close losses werent one off scenarios camp. Sure you can look at dubious decisions causing them to have to play with 14 or 13 men at the death as viable reasons but even in the games they won without such difficulties they made a real struggle of it (compared to how good some of their first half play was). This kind of article where you trying to point out the 3 losses really would most likely have been wins only really makes sense/works when your other performances make those 3 games (or endings) stand out.
There might have been a sentence here and there to ensure some good comment numbers but when he's signing off the article by saying things like ..
and..
I don't really see it. Always making sure people are upto date with the SH standing/perspective! NZ went through some tough times with so many different perspectives and reasons why, but then it was.. amusing how.. behind everyone was once they turned a corner. More of these 'unfortunate' results returned against SA and France at the start of the RWC which made it extra tasty to catch other teams out when they did bring it. So that created some 'conscious' perspective that I just kept going and sharing re thoughts on similar predicaments of other teams, I had been really confident that Wallabies displays vs NZ were real, that the Argentines can backup their thing against Aus and SA (and so obviously the rest), and current one is that England are actually consistent and improving with their attack (which everyone should get onboard with), and I'm expecting a more dominant display against Japan (even though they should have more of their experienced internationals for this one) that highlights further growth from July. 👍
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