{"id":757991,"date":"2026-06-24T21:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T21:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757991\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T21:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T21:52:11","slug":"aussie-retail-giant-looms-as-wildcard-influence-in-nrl-broadcast-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757991\/","title":{"rendered":"Aussie retail giant looms as wildcard influence in NRL broadcast deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

They may not be a broadcaster themselves, but retail giant Harvey Norman is shaping as a wildcard factor in who lands the next NRL broadcast rights deal according to reports<\/a> in the Australian Financial Review.<\/p>\n

As one of the game\u2019s longest-standing corporate sponsors, Harvey Norman injects millions into NRL and broadcaster coffers every season via significant advertising, naming rights and in-game sponsorship arrangements across the men\u2019s and women\u2019s competitions.<\/p>\n

Keeping them happy is therefore rather important for Peter V\u2019landys and the ARLC which potentially throws a major spanner in the works for one of the main broadcast deal bidders, Amazon.<\/p>\n

According to the AFR negotiations are in the advanced stages with Foxtel\/Dazn, Nine and\u00a0Amazon\u2019s Prime Video platform\u00a0all firmly in the mix as the ARLC looks to lock in a new multi-billion-dollar rights deal from the 2028 season.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0NRL 2026 Player Market – Every player off-contract, latest signing news<\/a><\/p>\n

It raises the potential for an highly awkward decision given Harvey Norman executive chairman Gerry Harvey has long been a vocal critic of Amazon.<\/p>\n

The 86-year-old business icon once famously labelled<\/a> the e-commerce giant founded by Jeff Bezos as a \u2018parasite\u2019 that contributes nothing to society, so it\u2019s hard to imagine he\u2019d be thrilled about pumping millions of advertising dollars into the US company\u2019s coffers should their bid successful.<\/p>\n

Asked about the prospect of NRL being streamed on Prime Video from 2028, Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page made her company\u2019s position crystal clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are happy with the status quo,\u201d she told the AFR.<\/p>\n

Harvey Norman is also a major advertiser with Nine Entertainment across its television network and various mastheads, including\u00a0The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review.<\/p>\n

Beyond rugby league, Gerry Harvey and Peter V\u2019landys also enjoy professional links through the Australian horse racing industry where they have both been key figures for many decades.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understood the ARLC hopes to announce its new broadcast rights deal before the departure of NRL CEO Andrew Abdo on July 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They may not be a broadcaster themselves, but retail giant Harvey Norman is shaping as a wildcard factor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-757991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}