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Melbourne Rebels 2024

Wallaby Man

Trevor Allan (34)
I think we've been through this before, and it's simply not true... highlighted by UEFA and every major tennis tournament.

I mean, if there wasn't anything else on it how could rugby be hidden within Stan Sport?
Sigh… I work in data and have access to the amount of people that have access to the platform. I can tell you only 3.8% of the population access the platform. It’s tiny.
 

Rebel man

Jim Lenehan (48)
Kayo is popular with 1.4m subscribers. I like the fact it has a live channel option as well. I tend to leave it on in the background at times with back to back NFL games and NRL games as well as watching cricket when they are overseas. Don't they have the cricket until 2031?


I know at the moment they use "The Rugby Network" app and local Fox stations for finals and some matches. Struggle to even follow who still exists. It's 1 team gone this year and 3 in then next year 4 will go and 1 new one.
The live channel is one thing they do better. Wish there was a live super rugby channel so you didn’t have to exit one game and select the next
 

Rebel man

Jim Lenehan (48)
Sigh… I work in data and have access to the amount of people that have access to the platform. I can tell you only 3.8% of the population access the platform. It’s tiny.
Look I agree the tennis majors aren’t a draw card as all the big games are on FTA
 

Wallaby Man

Trevor Allan (34)
Sigh… I work in data and have access to the amount of people that have access to the platform. I can tell you only 3.8% of the population access the platform. It’s tiny.
It’s in the same range of subscribers as BritBox. Stan itself is doing well, it’s the 4th largest streaming platform with 1 in 4 people with access to it.
 

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
I think we're discussing two separate issues here...

Rugby is certainly not hidden Stan Sport, and while the subscriber numbers for Stan Sport might be low they are slowly growing a decent sport library with the future potential of adding other major sports in the Nine catalogue.

Stan and Netflix are the only two profitable streaming services in Australia right now... Stan Sport is only a few years old but there is certainly a platform there for growth.

Australian rugby do have to deliver a better product though.
 

SouthernX

Peter Johnson (47)
Fuck that. Stan is so much better than Kayo. Stan has Super, UK premiership, 7s, Six Nations, QPR, Shute. Such a better app to use too.

stan sports isn’t really a great package other then rugby, some token tennis… woopty doo.

we need to band wagon to the premier sports service
 

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
stan sports isn’t really a great package other then rugby, some token tennis… woopty doo.

we need to band wagon to the premier sports service

Well, I don't think they can just "band wagon" across to that inferior product and likely reduced viewership unless there's a significant pay deal on offer.

But maybe this is a discussion for the broadcast thread, or the obituaries thread...
 

Members Section

John Thornett (49)
We are getting off rebels topic obviously but if ESPN were to enter the sporting market alone here in the next few years, would that be a good result for rugby?

I'm not fully across what's happening with USA Rugby but there potentially looks like some good press and money heading that way and they've got a future RWC. Could ESPN potentially look to make an exclusive rugby deal? They've got the money and production ability to really shake things up.

The flow on effect of course would be if ESPN remove their content from Foxtel, suddenly Fox might bring some more money to the table to grab rugby as they'd lose half their catalogue.

Espn will never happen, foxtel is a thing of the past if we went back to Murdoch it would be Kayo. Amazon is prob more of an option than Kayo.
 

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
Kayo still have the market in aus because of AFL/NRL but its a shadow of fox sports pre streaming

Dead might be an exaggeration, but their ESPN viewership is quite significant - I believe the NBA is only second to the AFL in regards to their streaming figures.
 

SouthernX

Peter Johnson (47)
If ESPN ever go it alone or integrate into Disney+, Kayo is dead.

I believe espn and news corp have a deal/partnership though.

it happened after 20th century fox was bought out by Disney.

anyways sounds like convo is to move to broadcasting thread so that’s my final thoughts on this
 

Rebelsfan

Billy Sheehan (19)
I’ve done a short of a state of the unions analysis on the financial reports released every year or two. Rebels and Force don’t make there’s available as far as I could find in my short googling at the time, Force is understandable as they’re privately owned but I never understood why Rebels annual annual report wasn’t available.
Too much to hide
 

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
I mean isn’t that a fairly common thing for companies trading insolvent?

I have a very rudimentary understanding of tax in the this country but it’s not like the Rebels were taking money from the players and staff and not passing it on right? They simply weren’t paying the PAYG portion of the salaries to the ATO?

Does the article say if it’s simply overdue or if they’ve negotiated deferral payments? The dollar figures don’t change but it’s a pretty different situation if they’ve just buried their head in the sand and not paid the ATO until they came knocking, or if they actively sought instalment plans etc.

I guess for it to be happening for 5 years it’s likely there’s at least a portion that was just being pushed to the side and the ATO weren’t aware. Hard to do though with the STP reporting requirements.

The ATO dramatically reduced collection activities through COVID so from 2020-2022 there was unlikely to be any action taken to recover debts even if they were already in the millions. This probably meant that the debts just kept building up but didn't start getting chased until last year.

The directors can be made jointly and severally liable for unpaid PAYG withholding, GST and superannuation guarantee obligations. The ATO is very likely to come after them. The fact that a company is a NFP is irrelevant.
 

Members Section

John Thornett (49)
Dead might be an exaggeration, but their ESPN viewership is quite significant - I believe the NBA is only second to the AFL in regards to their streaming figures.

Really ahead of the nrl? I never would have picked that. The NBA is on the nose massively in the usa atm
 

Rebel man

Jim Lenehan (48)



To be fair the Rebels use to have their players play Dewar Shield. The death of the NRC and the Melbourne losing the Rising and the Covid years where we had no competition really hurt club rugby across the board in Victoria and it is still trying to recover
 

PhilClinton

Geoff Shaw (53)
Dead might be an exaggeration, but their ESPN viewership is quite significant - I believe the NBA is only second to the AFL in regards to their streaming figures.

I'm an NBA fan so I'm contributing to those figures - but have they been normalised to factor in minutes of content available per week? NBA will always be at an advantage there over our domestic sports - they probably stream something like 12-15 games a week via ESPN/Kayo.
 

KevinO

Geoff Shaw (53)



To be fair the Rebels use to have their players play Dewar Shield. The death of the NRC and the Melbourne losing the Rising and the Covid years where we had no competition really hurt club rugby across the board in Victoria and it is still trying to recover
This was dribble, didn't really say much. I do remember the Rebels did a season or two where they played club rugby in Vic. It's a tough one, talking with some players a lot of the reasoning is the quality of the fields. Hardwick stuck with playing in Vic, didn't mention that.
 
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