Some sobering realities for the NRL.
Melbourne Storm recently negotiated with a potential major sponsor. The numbers hovered around $1 million to $1.2 million a year, a handy amount.
Just before the deal looked done there was another drunken night out in another part of the rugby league world and the sponsor decided rugby league was a bad fit.
Money gone.
Elsewhere in rugby league world, Cronulla’s jersey remains a pristine canvas of black, blue and white. It remains uncluttered with distracting signage from a major sponsor.
The Sharks had several potential sponsors willing to pay between half a million and a million dollars a year each but, when it came to attaching their brand to rugby league, the sponsors ultimately could not bring themselves to do it.
Yes, they confirmed, one incident too many.
Money gone.
Across town South Sydney was in strong conversations with a bank, a key market the NRL is keen to break into.
The code is almost embarrassed it does not have national brands like banks and supermarkets among its blue chip sponsors.
Then several incidents of player misbehaviour broke, pick any one you like, and the sponsors took a walk.
Money gone.
At Manly, a club like Cronulla struggling to remain financially competitive with its rivals, three sponsors walked away after Dylan Walker faced court on domestic violence charges.
Money gone.
Canterbury lost several sponsors, we know, after last year’s Mad Monday, including its major sponsor.
Money gone.
The Bulldogs then had to work hard to keep other sponsors when the Dylan Napa videos broke.
Money saved, but barely.
To quote part of an email to one NRL chief executive over the summer, from a sponsor that walked away late in negotiations with a Sydney club: “Unfortunately our team don’t really like NRL. They don’t believe the image fits with our brand.”
The sponsor could not even disguise its rejection in polite jargon.
Our team don’t really like NRL …
Even a conservative count puts the cost over the summer, and this is by no means a comprehensive list, at about $5-6 million lost to the game on just those clubs mentioned. This, in a competition where annually only two, sometimes three teams make a profit for the year.
The NRL keeps no official figures on how much money is lost from the game in the wake of player misbehaviour.
The players have no appetite to know.
On top of money that leaves the game there is the other, impossible to quantify, sum of money that never actually comes into the game because potential sponsors turn away before investing.
Gold Coast chairman Dennis Watt estimated the cost to be at least $6.5 million this year alone based on the 13 points - valued at $500,000 a point - the NRL dropped in its Net Performance Score.
Souths chief executive Blake Solly placed it “north of $10 million” based on a quick calculation with other club bosses telling him what they had lost. Along with his club.
“I honestly can’t say what the number is,” an NRL official said, “because of lost opportunities.”
It is fair to argue not every dollar lost in the above examples were already in the game, for instance, so it can’t be counted as having left the game. But it is money that could be in the game.
Enough money has walked away that at the chief executives conference in Melbourne last week the revision of player salaries, under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, was raised.
Under the terms agreed upon, a dip of $10 million in forecast revenue can force the League and the players back to the table to renegotiate a new salary cap.
It is not there yet.
But with the game’s major sponsor Telstra said to be seriously monitoring the NRL’s handling of recent events, in the current corporate climate, the players are in a vulnerable position.
In the wake of the banking royal commission major companies around the country are re-examining their corporate relationships to ensure they fit their corporate image. On top of that, Telstra is going through major cost cutting.
It leaves the NRL, and the players, vulnerable.
And there is more bad news for the players. As one chief executive said: “When the CBA was struck there was disunity among the clubs. That is not there now. The players are in a far weaker position.”
Yet for reasons unknown the players, led by the Rugby League Players Association, remain militant. They argue strongly, unaware they are arguing just a piece of the picture.
The NRL will suspend Jack de Belin, currently facing charges of aggravated sexual assault, on Thursday.
More damaging headlines.
The RLPA has reinforced its position that it will support de Belin, leading to a possible showdown with the NRL.
“Everyone in the country is entitled to the presumption of innocence until they are proven guilty, and just because you’re a footballer or a high-profile person, you don’t lose that right,” Penrith’s James Maloney, a RLPA spokesman, said last week. He trotted out a similar line to Channel 9 on Thursday.
RLPA chief executive Ian Prendergast said: “The game can’t be judge, jury and executioner before the criminal process is complete.”
This, on the day Greg Inglis said: “Obviously player behaviour has probably been the worst it has (been).”
The NRL is in a fight for its reputation, which is a fight for money, which is a fight for survival.
Maloney is making the leap, though, that being stood down somehow removes the presumption of innocence. It is an argument of convenience.
The remand centre at Silverwater is filled with people charged with serious offences, waiting for their day in court, yet considered too great a risk to be allowed free in the community. This assessment is based on the seriousness of the charges and the strength of the police brief against them.
Yet placing them in remand does not, according to the courts, remove their presumption of innocence. It acknowledges there is a greater responsibility, in this case to the community.
Why do we persist with this “presumption of innocence” narrative continually trotted out for players facing serious charges?
Give the player all the aid he needs. But when sponsors are walking away, the greater responsibility is to the game.
Safety is not the issue de Belin’s case. Reputation is.
The NRL is resolute the game’s welfare is at stake.
All those potential sponsors walked away because they feared associating their brand with players, and with a game that has been weak on player discipline for too many years.
This limp attitude has already cost the game millions, a fact that frustrates the NRL.
At its best the NRL is, conservatively, more than comparable to AFL. Many of us feel it is a much better game. In the 1990s, it could be argued rugby league was a bigger game then AFL. But the game has gone backwards.
Last year, Collingwood and Sydney Swans pulled in about $19 million in sponsorship. Adelaide about $18 million. The AFL average was $11 million a club.
The NRL’s most sponsored club, Brisbane, made $10 million. Less than the AFL average. The NRL average is $6 million.
Money goes, and when money goes, the game withers. And yet we let the narrative get stolen to protect the interest of the few.
De Belin deserves support. But the game’s welfare should remain the priority.