Australian Rugby / RA

Both News Corp and Nine media tonight reporting that RA is immediately headed to State and Federal govts for financial aid.

SMH online notes the low level of RA cash reserves relative to the other major football codes.

Conflicting reports re status of future media rights negotiations.

The knock on effect of this blase attitude is quite frankly scary. There would be a considerable amount of people who are directly and indirectly impacted if we simply let the sporting codes go insolvent. Putting aside all the people who are directly employed by the code; just from a game day perspective, you'll have the stadium employees out of work. This includes all of those check your bags, tell you where to sit, to the people cooking your food, pouring your drinks etc. This change in demand for food/drink will mean suppliers are impacted and will be forced to take measures to limit loses, which then impacts their suppliers etc etc.

You'll have the TV production people out of a job, both those on site and back in the studio. You'll then have players, coaching staff, support staff and everyone else who supports the support.

This then has a knock on impact down the track when all these people can't spend cash to buy goods/services which will then causes loses in other industries.

I have absolutely no problem with any employer approaching the government to understand how and what they can do to help. Unlike many corporations where their drones can keep the business ticking over from the couch so it makes sense for any business which isn't deriving income to seek assistance.

It will a tough job for the Federal and State governments to prioritise any relief packages for the large number of Australian businesses hurt by the virus fallout.
The sporting industry is just one which will be making a pitch for taxpayer funds, and it has the issue of highly paid stars and administrators who look as though they could easily last 2 months without a pay packet.
Many small businesses do not have that luxury and will also be asking for financial relief, as will people whose jobs disappear and still have mortgages to pay.

Within the industry many individuals will be hurting, like the cleaning contractors and food suppliers. Governments will probably give them greater priority than a sporting code governing body.

I don't think the sporting organisations themselves (i.e. RA, NRL, AFL) will be well placed to qualify for government handouts.

Apparently the NRL goes broke in two months. If that's the case, RA will be up the creek without a paddle or a map

That quote above of my text is of course highly selective; I went on in the same post to talk of limited govt aid fully resurrecting the game in 2021 when media and fan demand returned for live rugby and where hopefully the virus crisis has gone. It was also clear that I was not personally advocating rugby’s 2020 insolvency but rather saying or implying ‘this is what the real-world choices and policies may in practice come down to’.

I have also posted re the employment density of rugby - and most all sports codes here.

I was in this context of potential govt aid to sports codes like rugby above all trying to consider or start debate re realistic levels of govt aid to sport codes and the related potential consequences vs vast mega bail outs of all sports codes that I strongly suspect no govt can contemplate as, if sports codes, why not every other suffering sector with moderate to high employment density? The aggregate bill would decimate govt finances for generations.

I was/am clearly not blasé re such things and employment impacts - the issue is one of what may be realistically possible and what type of financially-driven scenarios may realistically result from them.

There’s no doubt that the NRL and AFL have vastly higher capital and cash reserves than rugby’s. They also have vastly higher political clout given their audience bases.

The SMH is quoting rugby’s cash reserves at $18m a year ago and that such has been materially depleted since then re the Folau costs and the lack of winter international Tests last year, etc.

Rugby’s finances are extremely vulnerable to any deterioration in its forward revenue picture, let alone the massive revenue decline likely to occur as a result of COVID-19.

maybe Rugby being smaller will help us here, our financial footprint is a lot smaller than NRL & AFL. We're already running on the smell of an oily rag.

That's certainly what I'm hoping for. We're used to operating borderline broke. While the likes of the NRL and AFL live lives of lergesse by comparison. I've found comparing my experiences in life seeing my parents struggle early on to make something only to lose it before making much of it back compared to others who always had it before losing it is that those with little to start tend to be more adaptable. Well, that's what I'm hoping anyway.

Just a btw: the other potential asset we have that the other codes (bar soccer) don't is something called World Rugby, sitting in Ireland.

There will be many demands upon its resources, but WR post a RWC year has considerable capital and it may well be that in a COVID-19 world it has to decide to cease or delimit 'code development' projects and divert resources to 'code survival' processes where needed most.

WR will know that RA is one of its most vulnerable major outposts. I have long posted here that WR would not want to see rugby in Australia bankrupt and bankrupt of a kind that it may not be able to recover from.

So watching the WR space in the coming weeks and months will likely be worth the effort.

Balls. Rugby of all levels to be postponed till at least May: https://www.rugby.com.au/news/2020/...Wc4B40gTZ8DsmVVs64A0tyoeHj6R5iixYmLQ7BwBGezRg.

I’m not sure where we post banter for the next few months.

Q&A to finally have a balanced audience. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/bu...a/news-story/0bb1117d6d68b7be0cbd61045a129c6c

Queensland sporting teams have united and approached the Stadiums Queensland and asked for dispensation for the stadium rent fees, best case scenario it delivers peppercorn rental agreements for when games are playing again. Doesn’t solve the immediate cashflow issue but will help the financial recovery once games are getting played again.

Broadcast agreement dealings suspended for now...

Super W suspended until late May at earliest.

League and afl also announcing pay cuts and redundancies - surprised same not been announced with rugby as it needs to so as to ensure rugby comes out the other end and survives

There is a story in the SMH this morning saying that the players' union are in talks with RA. Why be surprised that something as potentially sensitive as this is being handled behind closed doors?



We would all like to know what is going on, but what most of us want above all is for the right decisions to be made, and that almost always happens behind closed doors. And so it should.

It is worth noting super rugby players in Australia are paid differently to AFL/NRL (who get a salary paid monthly). Players get a base contract with super rugby team, match payments per game, potentially a RA top up contract and match payments for wallabies).

So 12 months time and rugby is back on - what will it look like?

My thoughts it will be very different. Rugby Australia will have been bailed out by Twiggy and with that comes his people to run it, hopefully with a balanced board. I think it would be a positive outcome.

Over to the rest of G&GR

If that happens Outsider and is essentially just a takeover with operations still continuing under the RA banner, then I think even with Forrest at the helm we'd still be locked into Super rugby. If RA is completely dismantled and replaced by an entirely different ownership/management/governance structure then I could see rugby in this country pulling out of Super and setting up something a bit more domestic or aligned with Asia. Who would SANZAR (note the omission of "A" for Australia) be able to sue in those circumstances if RA simply ceases to exist?

I think the chances of a takeover will certainy be higher than they've ever been. But not necessarily by Forrest. I reckon CVC and WR are quietly biding their time waiting for things to settle down. I think we may see CVC come on board with WR Nations Championship structure as well as invest in SANZAAR as a means of essentially capturing commercial interests in 3 of the 4 major competitions.

I also think this will see some fairly significant structural changes in the game in order to fit with their plans. A global season may be part of that. Who knows? But I certainly wouldn't mind a Forrest takeover.