The Awful Truth About The ARU's Financial Position

[BarneySF]

Right or not, the Headline plus his profile pic makes me want to punch him in the face: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/u...-in-super-rugby-expansion-20140418-zqvz7.html

These articles always seem to be most 'detailed' when they come from mungo writers.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

It's pretty typical of Masters:
1)There is actually no analysis just a series of 2 line propositions with not source nominated and not even a suggestion that there was a source. It reads like a very long gossip column.
2) there are several sentences that do not say what he meant to say although for him that's a good outcome.
Of course he couldn't resist pointing out just how well league did with the 9s - pity about the rest of the world.
The ARUs financial position is hardly news so it's just a snipe from a mungo.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Roy's had another try and has included this:

While rugby union is the dominant sport in South Africa and New Zealand, Australia has competition for first choice athletes from the richer AFL and NRL competitions and from abroad via lucrative offers from Europe and Japan.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/union-news/news-limited-deal-cost-australian-rugby-union-in-future-tv-rights-20140418-zqvtw.html#ixzz2zH9bqVjq

It is beyond his tiny mind to contemplate that for some rugby is their first choice and not a fall back.

 

[Quick Hands]

Typical Master piece written for a league perspective. I did notice, however, some interesting comments attributed to the RUPA or a report that they commissioned. It seems that the players have realised that if no-one watches them, they aren't going to be paid as much and that players can't expect to be paid more than NRL/AFL players for a season that's half as long.

 

[Omar Comin']

It's increasingly obvious that the current Super Rugby competition doesn't work for Australian rugby. Perhaps it works in terms of preparing the Wallabies, but in every other way it doesn't work. The finances are proof.

3 or 4 games in our time zone each weekend isn't enough, we're getting swamped by the other codes. A third of the competition played in the middle of the night when no one watches is ridiculous and there is a loss of momentum for teams - in terms of public interest and publicity when they are in South Africa. They are out of sight, out of mind for all but the die hard fans.

We need a competition that doubles the number of games in good viewing hours in Australia every weekend. If the ARU said to NZ, we want a Pacific-Rim competition and won't settle for anything else, do you really think NZ is going to say no we'll just play a comp with South Africa? And have only 2 games in their time zone each week, with more than half their competition played in the middle of the night? I don't think so. Even if they did, we would be better off going on our own and creating an A-League style extended NRC competition, perhaps with a couple of teams from Asia.

Matches against the South African based teams should only happen in a shorter champions league or knock out style competition.

 

[Crashy]

I don't think Pulver is stupid and I have some blind faith that the next TV deal will see a fair bit more $ flow to Aus. Surely games in SA can be held occasionally earlier in the day so Aus fans can watch their teams play and similarly saffa games in Aus could be played a smidge later at night so Saffa fans can see their teams while chomping on a baco-eggo roll. I absolutely love the Friday arvo kiwi games in Australia at 5.30 as it signals the start of the weekend for me but a 6 o'clock start might see higher rating figures in Aus?
Lets say Australia sees a further $5 mil a year from super rugby TV rights - if they flick $500k to each club that leaves $2.5 mil for funding grass roots.
As an example the Brumbies lost $150k last year so surely an extra $500k would sort them out especially as they have their multi million dollar foundation set to pump out some decent income each year.
The force dusted $800k last year but expect to be breakeven this year. The Rebels are the worry but hey all this pales into insignificance when looking at the bailout that the Wests Tigers received of $7 million!

 

[Quick Hands]

I think its a valid point which Omar Comin' makes about time zones. No doubt it would work better for Australia, in our sports market to have all games played in Aus or NZ. On the other hand, the SAF teams have been part of Super Rugby since its inception and I don't think you can just kick them out or exclude them when it suits you either. It's the price of being an international game.

Having said that, I think a 10 team Aus/NZ home and away competition would work and work well for both countries.

 

[Omar Comin']

On the other hand, the SAF teams have been part of Super Rugby since its inception and I don't think you can just kick them out or exclude them when it suits you either. It's the price of being an international game.

Come on, they've been threatening to leave from the start! I wouldn't shed any tears. In reality it would make our test matches against the boks, and any champions league style matches against South African sides a whole lot more special. They'd become unique again.

If we did everything for the good of the international game then we'd have teams from Samoa, Tonga and Fiji...and they'd have been part of the Tri-Nations from the start. They've been excluded because it's suited us to exclude them.

The time zone works okay for South Africa because games in Australia and NZ are shown in the mid morning over there. It just doesn't work the other way. If we want to have a competition that's international we'd be better off aligning with Asia - similar time zone. Even the Americas would be better.

 

[Hugh Jarse]

Consider what will be the crowds during Diveball World Cup this year, and previous. Nearly always played in "difficult" times for the Australian market, but the pubs and clubs that show the games are packed.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

The Kiwis view is that SA and NZ are rugby saturated and the only place for growth is Oz.
They think that the best deal for all of us will come from leveraging the Oz TV market.
We may have some bargaining power this time around.

 

[Quick Hands]

Come on, they've been threatening to leave from the start! I wouldn't shed any tears. In reality it would make our test matches against the boks, and any champions league style matches against South African sides a whole lot more special.

I agree with your general argument, I'm just pointing out that in an international sport you can't just do things because you want to. We have gained by being part of SANZAR and having the SA teams in - there'd be no Force or Rebels without a viable Super 12 competition all those years ago. We can't just give them the finger now because it suits us, not only because it's not the right thing to do, but if you want to talk self-interest, we might need them in the future. In case you haven't noticed the game in Australia is broke, our biggest province struggles to draw 15,000 people in a city of 4 million and our local junior "system" is in decline.

 

[Omar Comin']

Consider what will be the crowds during Diveball World Cup this year, and previous. Nearly always played in "difficult" times for the Australian market, but the pubs and clubs that show the games are packed.

Yeah, it's the biggest sporting event in the world, is played every 4 years and goes for a month. Every match is crucial. Not exactly comparing like with like.

If anything it highlights the argument for only playing South African teams in a much shorter competition. If the Waratahs or the Brumbies or whoever had a match in South Africa and it was an important pool match or a quarter final in a Heineken Cup style tournament then it'd get more people watching.

 

[Omar Comin']

In case you haven't noticed the game in Australia is broke, our biggest province struggles to draw 15,000 people in a city of 4 million and our local junior "system" is in decline.

Yep, and that's the case because of the status quo. Rugby gets swamped by the other codes and doesn't produce enough domestic content.

I'm all for staying aligned with South Africa. We should definitely keep playing them in the rugby championship, and I'd be all for a champions league/heineken cup style tournament with them...or closed conferences followed by a inter conference play offs.

But the current situation just doesn't work for us. And I don't think we do a whole lot for South African rugby either really (in terms of the benefit they get from super rugby).

I don't think the ARU can afford to compromise on this. If SANZAR can't agree to something that increases the amount of domestic content considerably than I think we should go our own way. The way we're going at the moment is leading to financial oblivion and sporting irrelevancy in the Australian market.

 

[Train Without a Station]

I think we need to be mindful that whilst 3-4 games in the right time zone brings in less revenue than the AFL and NRL which have 8 and 9 games in the right time zone, we also have less than a third of the players to support from that.

The issue is that a large chunk of our "season" is international season which cuts that back to a solitary game that our market cares about, which then is only about every second weekend over that whole period.

You also need to consider the lack of real prestige around the finals series. Look at AFL finals leading to a massive GF at the MCG, look at NRL finals leading to a massive GF at homebush, then look at the Super Rugby finals with a GF, location decided one week out from it's date... The other 2 sports create the fanfare around finals like American sports do but with the make up and the uncertainty over locations Super Rugby isn't about to do that also.

I feel generally the regular season, for what the ARU wants to achieve is adequate (though I certainly agree there are superior solutions which would benefit the ARU further), it's once we get to finals and international season that we really start to slip behind. The NRC will go a long way to improving this though, creating a competition where each weekend there will be 4 games, generating interest from 8 geographical locations in Australia.

 

[Omar Comin']

The NRC will go a long way to improving this though, creating a competition where each weekend there will be 4 games, generating interest from 8 geographical locations in Australia.

Maybe...but the NRC is a 3rd tier competition. General sports fans will see it as a super rugby 2nd division. I hope it will be well supported by the hard core rugby base but I'm not sure it will be a big driver of interest for fringe or new fans.

The top domestic tier is where we really need to get the week in, week out competition right. We could easily have a 12 team competition between Australian, NZ and Asian teams with 6 games a week played at ideal times. That would almost double the content valuable to broadcasters without increasing the number of players we have to pay or even the number of matches they play. And teams wouldn't disappear for a couple of weeks every year.

 

[wamberal]

Roy Masters is biased, but he is no dill. He is a former schoolteacher who worked as a fairly successful coach for some years.

It all boils down to this, IMHO: our game, as we play it, is just not attractive enough to the average punter, except at the very highest level. Last night's two games illustrates a sad point: the New Zealand local derby was great to watch, high standards, lots of wonderful, exciting rugby. The Force Rebels game was dire in comparision, by any standards.

(Interestingly, and sadly, the Hurricanes only drew 10,000 to the Caketin, for a game that was always going to be good value).

I am honestly buggered if I know what the answer is, in fact, if the first step is to frame the right questions, I am not sure that I can even do that.


Australian rugby only has two attractive products. All Blacks tests and Lions tours. I suppose another local World Cup would also fit into that category, but I am resigned to never seeing one of those again in my lifetime. Even Lions tours could disappear, as the game continues to change in the NH.


Others will disagree violently, but as somebody who has lived and breathed and passionately loved the game for more than 60 years, I believe we are in an existential crisis.


This is a situation that is brewing here, but if Masters is correct, New Zealand will be affected over time. We have an Australian as CEO of the IRB, if changes are possible, now is the time.

The game's rules simply have to be changed radically to make it more interesting, accessible to the newcomer, and universal in appeal.

Let's forget all the b/s about rugby being a game for every body shape to play. We need to turn it into a game that every body shape will watch.

 

[Quick Hands]

I agree with most of what you say here Wamberal. The problems that the game faces in Australia are unique and multi-dimensional. Australia and Papua New Guinea are the only places in the world where league is more popular than rugby, so even if law changes were the answer, I'm not sure it's something that's achievable.

It's long fascinated me why Australian super games are generally more boring that NZ and even SAF ones and also more boring that Shute Shield matches (I appreciate it's a different level). I don't really have the answer, but administration, coaching and development must have something to do with it.

Almost all of the professional rugby player in Australia have been through the same player development process. Is this process producing so many similar players that when they play each other, they effectively cancel each other out? Should the elite youth development programme be given to the Super teams to promote innovation and difference?

The Waratahs were, until 2 years ago, almost the perfect case study in administration and coaching dysfunction. A situation which is taking longer to turn around that I thought - the team are playing well, but the fans haven't returned.

Ten years ago Waratahs matches regularly drew 30,000 plus to Aus and NZ matches and 25,000 to SAF matches. SFS members couldn't even use club cards to Reds and Brumbies matches as the members' area was so full. Now we keep the crowds secret, but they are between 12,000-17,000 - around half and that is self-inflicted, nothing to do with the laws, but everything to do with how the team was coached and what instructions/pressures were put on the coaches by the administration.

This heavily cuts into the revenue of the Waratahs and there is a knock-on effect to the ARU, as NSW is the biggest state in the country.

How we get out of this, I don't know either, but our teams can choose to play positive, entertaining rugby if they so wish.

 

[Pfitzy]

Firstly, the NSW Administration is triple fucked because old boys clubs, political agendas, and self-interest.

Secondly, Masters is a shunt:

The average TV audience for a Super Rugby game in Australia is 62,000. If we exclude South Africa, where games are played at 3am our time, the number rises to 95,000.

These are soft figures, considering the Auckland Nines, a new rugby league competition, generated ratings of 227,000 on Fox Sports.

What a fucking miserable excuse for a human being. He, along with Kent, Weidler, et al, were lining up to slurp Folau's bag when he looked like signing with Parramatta.

When that didn't happen, the fucking toys came out of the pram at speed, blaming the ARL, the NRL, Folau and his greedy family and their scams that actually break the salary cap, his agent, or anyone walking past.

So Masters can mount the donkey in the most imaginative fashion you can think of

 

[Pfitzy]

Further: I think the time is ripe to dump the South African partnership, and embrace our own time zone.

The logistics of Japan make more sense too - the flight to Tokyo is about three of four hours shorter than Jo'Burg, which has the added problem of connections to other major centres.

Keep five teams each in Oz and NZ, and add a Pac Islands team based somewhere on the north Island (south Auckland makes the most sense from a demographics pov) and South Africa can look after Argentina.

More trans-Tasman competition and a push for FTA will help, but yes the style of rugby needs to be good too.

This is the only sticking point: we like a running game in the antipodes, and showing the rest of the world how it should be done will just make the old farts up north shut up shop even harder

 

[starkz]

Roy Masters said today in article that Aus rugby could be pretty much done and dusted as a professional game in super rugby by 2020. Not good news at all.