{"id":785319,"date":"2026-07-07T18:29:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T18:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785319\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T18:29:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T18:29:50","slug":"nrl-broadcast-rights-deal-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-5-3-billion-agreement-between-the-nrl-nine-and-foxtel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785319\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL broadcast rights deal: Everything you need to know about the $5.3 billion agreement between the NRL, Nine and Foxtel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After all the bluff and bluster, all the talk of new streaming giants threatening to shake things up, and all those doubts about whether Peter V\u2019landys could walk the talk, negotiations over a new NRL rights mega-deal landed where they were likely always going to: the status quo.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean the mammoth agreement between the NRL and broadcasters Nine and Foxtel is boring. Far from it. The $5.3 billion, seven-year deal unveiled on Tuesday<\/a> has serious ramifications for the code, its players and fans.<\/p>\n

\"NineNine and Foxtel have retained the rights to broadcast the NRL.Michael Howard<\/p>\n

Nine will pay $145 million in cash each year, offset by $10 million in promised advertising spend by the NRL. In return, Nine, owner of this masthead, gets to broadcast up to three games each week, and retains exclusive rights to the crucial State of Origin and grand final.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Foxtel will stump up about $520 million per year \u2013 roughly double its current deal. Nine\u2019s $145 million contribution is only 25 per cent more than its current outlay.<\/p>\n

Given that sharp difference, there was a weird vibe at Tuesday\u2019s deal signing. Foxtel boss Patrick Delany, who is coughing up a fortune and has a huge job ahead in bringing in enough subscriber revenue to justify it, was beaming as he hugged NRL executive chairman Peter V\u2019landys.<\/p>\n

Nine chief executive officer Matt Stanton looked less enthusiastic. It didn\u2019t help that V\u2019landys initially mispronounced his surname as \u201cStaunton\u201d. The bruising nature of the negotiations over recent months didn\u2019t exactly make for happy families on Tuesday either.<\/p>\n

\"NineNine chief executive officer Matt Stanton at Tuesday\u2019s announcement.Dominic Lorrimer<\/p>\n

But behind Stanton\u2019s poker face lies the reality that Nine emerges from this deal in better shape than Foxtel.<\/p>\n

Nine has to fork out an extra $210 million in cash over seven years, whereas Foxtel has to find a whopping $1.8 billion extra.<\/p>\n

How will they do it? Some of the first questions asked at Tuesday\u2019s media conference were whether the subscription price of the Kayo streaming app would have to rise, and whether the deal contains any caveats to make sure access remains affordable for fans.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Australian<\/a><\/p>\n

V\u2019landys said the deal would ensure \u201cfans can afford to watch the great game of rugby league\u201d but Delany did not rule out a price hike.<\/p>\n

Assuming Kayo hiked subscription prices by $10 a month for 1 million league subscribers, that would deliver $120 million extra revenue each year \u2013 not enough to meet the $250 million annual difference between Foxtel\u2019s old deal and new one.<\/p>\n

Delany pointed to other strategies to grow subscriber numbers, including introduction of three new teams to the competition by 2029, and a push to expand the game internationally.<\/p>\n

But the jury is out on whether the new teams \u2013 the PNG Chiefs, Perth Bears and a likely second New Zealand outfit \u2013 will draw massive new interest. The NRL\u2019s past attempts to globalise the game have also struggled to gain traction.<\/p>\n

Delany insists he can make the economics work. \u201cPeople have been talking about Foxtel\u2019s survival for a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cFoxtel\u2019s thriving.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see sports rights increase and increase in value. This is actually the fourth deal I\u2019ve done with the NRL. At every deal people have said, \u2018Oh my God, it\u2019s a lot of money. How will you afford it? How will you survive?\u2019. And yet here we are thriving. Sports is the one thing everyone wants to watch. It\u2019s very, very valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

V\u2019landys also said the more Foxtel and its parent company DAZN can grow subscriber numbers overseas, the less pressure there will be on prices in Australia. \u201cWe\u2019ve got one, and only one, chance to globalise the game and we\u2019re going to do it,\u201d he said. \u201cWho\u2019s to say in 2050 that there\u2019s not a team in the NRL from Europe? That\u2019s the aim. Why isn\u2019t there one from America? The world\u2019s our oyster. If you sit back and do nothing, you\u2019ll perish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foxtel has a big task ahead of it, but the alternative in losing the rights would have been far worse. It would have been existential for Kayo. With streaming giant Amazon sniffing around the rights, and Nine lobbing a bid to acquire all games and finals to broadcast on its free-to-air channel and streaming platform Stan, Foxtel had to go big to head off the threat. It did so with heaps of cash and the pledge to grow the game internationally, the latter of which the big-thinking V\u2019landys could not resist.<\/p>\n

Nine also had a lot to lose going into the negotiations. Delany made a big play during the talks to steal State of Origin and the grand final from Nine, but failed. Losing that exclusivity would have been a disaster for Nine given the huge audience \u2013 and advertising revenue \u2013 those events bring in. While Stanton would have liked to win the entire rights to help boost Stan, he is more than happy with the status quo.<\/p>\n

\"FoxtelFoxtel chief executive officer Patrick Delany, outgoing NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo, Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V\u2019landys and Nine chief executive Matt Stanton.Dominic Lorrimer<\/p>\n

The new terms deliver the NRL<\/a> a massive 90 per cent uplift in cash compared to the previous deal, which was arguably artificially low because it was struck during the COVID era when the future of the game was unclear. V\u2019landys will use some of the windfall to eventually lift the salary cap from $12 million to $20 million, paving the way for league\u2019s first $2 million-per-season player.<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest winner from Tuesday\u2019s deal, though, is V\u2019landys himself.<\/p>\n

While outgoing NRL chief executive officer<\/a> Andrew Abdo was crucial in keeping the fractious negotiations on track and probably won\u2019t get the credit he deserves, V\u2019landys can seize on $5.3 billion worth of momentum in the campaign to install him as the NRL\u2019s all-powerful executive chairman<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n

Cashed up and cock-a-hoop, V\u2019landys will walk into Suncorp Stadium for the State of Origin decider on Wednesday and take his seat alongside the same media executives he has been battling for months.<\/p>\n

When he declared last year he wanted the NRL\u2019s new deal to eclipse the AFL\u2019s record-breaking $4.5 billion rights agreement, many of them thought he was mad. Whatever you think of V\u2019landys \u2013 and there is a lot to be said \u2013 he\u2019s delivered.<\/p>\n

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\"BevanBevan Shields<\/a> is a senior writer, and former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-785319","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\/785319","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=785319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}