Lots of gung-ho 'Foxtel gets the arse, we like' and/or 'Optus/10 will bid big, all will be OK' and/or 'don't worry Foxtel will come back into the bidding' sentiments here.
But, on objective grounds, an equally valid hypothesis is that this is a very dangerous time for Australian rugby in broadcaster $s terms. Every State/Territory RU depends upon RA's broadcaster-derived $s to survive, as does RA itself.
Every key eyeballs-on-rugby metric for investment justification by an Australian broadcaster is falling markedly - what prudent buyer of rugby rights would not need to factor in this trend and from a poor 2020 base, and not assume a magical reversal - to their ROI scenarios.
Optus will be intrinsically cautious wrt any rugby rights bid given the code's core trend metrics and that it must sub-contract the full visual production to 10 most likely and 10 is by no means flush with cash to splurge on rugby rights or cross-subsidised production costs for a niche code under stress. I could be wrong, but I'd surmise that Optus would be very nervous re a scenario whereby it had to run the entire all-of-rugby visual production process all over the country by itself having never done this before.
If Foxtel really don't come into the bidding - and surely it bidding rough and blind on a RA facts and games on offer doc it has not even bothered to obtain (but its competitors have) is unlikely and potentially very risky to it - until very late past a formal bids-in date or not at all, Optus will rightly low-ball their $ offer big time. If Foxtel simply don't come in ever and Optus/10 bid way low - the entire Foxtel-fed economic framework that has held up the ill-run and fragile enterprise that is Australian Rugby for the last decade or more could collapse with truly calamitous consequences for the code in this country.
And what if Optus/10 simply does not bid and neither does Foxtel - quite conceivable - and RA is left to return with its outstretched begging bowl to Foxtel? What of Foxtel's 'last resort, please save RA' $ offer level then, if indeed it wanted to make one at all.
The critical issue remains for Foxtel as it always was/is: how many STBs and Kayo subs will it lose with no rugby and how much higher - if at all higher - is this lost $ value than any $ cost to obtain and then also produce the rugby rights for 2021-25? My guess is that calculus for Foxtel has got far tighter, more rigorous and much more cautious than at any previous point in the past 5 year rugby rights bidding cycles.
