News Corp and Nine set for talks over NRL rights deal – report

Media conglomerate News Corporation and Australian commercial broadcaster Nine are still some way from signing an agreement on rights for rugby league competition the NRL, despite suggestions a deal could be signed as soon as this week, according to The Australian.

The newspaper said News Corp and Nine are expected to hold a closed-door meeting involving senior management within weeks as they seek to resolve the issues surrounding NRL rights.

Under a proposed scenario, The Australian said NRL fans would have ­access to two live Friday night games with News Corp’s pay-television subsidiary Fox Sports broadcasting a 6pm Friday night game staged in Auckland, Brisbane or Townsville. Nine would also televise an 8pm game on the same evening, helping to deliver the NRL a rights agreement valued in the region of A$1.85bn (€1.21bn/$1.3bn).

In August, Nine retained domestic rights for the NRL in a deal that doubled the value of its free-to-air rights fee for the league. The agreement was worth A$185m per season over five years, from 2018 to 2022.

However, Fox Sports was cast aside from the talks and has since co-signed a six-year A$2.5bn deal with commercial broadcaster Seven and digital provider Telstra for domestic rights to Aussie rules competition the AFL. The NRL’s pay-television and digital rights have yet to be settled, with the league facing a battle to match the record deal struck by the AFL.

The Australian said the new deal, which would hand Fox Sports five live games, is contingent on Nine giving up its Saturday prime-time game to Fox for about A$30m a year, or A$150m over five years.

Nine’s new chief executive Hugh Marks is said to be under no immediate pressure to cut costs amid a downturn in the advertising market, but the broadcaster is believed to be keen to reduce its expenditure on NRL matches.

Asked by The Australian if he was open to doing a deal on NRL rights, Marks said: “I think, as we said at the time, we’re really happy with the rights that we’ve got, so at the moment that’s where we sit.”

Questioned on whether Nine needed to cut the costs of the contract signed in August, Marks added: “Not if we’re happy with the deal we’ve got. I think we’re really happy with the value of that sport to our franchise… and having the consistency of that Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday in your schedule, as I look forward into the future of TV — that’s incredibly valuable.”