Rugby Australia’s next five-year broadcast deal could be worth as much as $250 million if its Super Rugby franchises and the Wallabies return to winning ways.
The Financial Review revealed that the cash-strapped governing body could earn as much as $30m in incentives should its teams meet certain criteria. The extra cash would be in addition to a five-year deal worth a fraction over $210m – or 42m per annum.
“We can confirm we’ve reached an in-principle agreement with Rugby Australia,” a Nine spokesman told the AFR’s Zoe Samios. “We will share more details in due course as we finalise the contractual arrangements.”
The Wallabies have won just 41 per cent of Tests since 2016. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Rugby Australia declined to comment on the ongoing broadcast negotiations, but The Roar understands a deal is nearing sign-off and does not include the 2027 (men’s) and 2029 (women’s) World Cups.
The deal would be a significant uplift from its previous five-year, $150m deal that was struck in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis and helped save the game after former CEO Raelene Castle rolled the dice and took the broadcast deal to market. She was undone by the global pandemic, which stopped sport worldwide. It was also almost less than half of the previous five-year, $285m deal signed in late 2015.
Needing a deal to keep the game afloat, interim CEO Rob Clarke and new chairman Hamish McLennan managed to salvage a three-year deal worth around $30m per annum, which included an additional two-year re-signing option in Nine Entertainment and Stan’s favour that expires at the end of 2025. Their new broadcasters gleefully took advantage of the additional two years, picking up this year’s much-anticipated British and Irish Lions campaign at a bargain rate.
Rugby Australia CEO Phil Waugh and Rugby Australia Chairman Daniel Herbert following the announcement of a new five-year strategy. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
The incentives come after the Wallabies fell not just down the World Rugby rankings but slid off the national consciousness after reaching the 2015 World Cup final by claiming only 41 per cent Tests (44 of 108) since 2016. At the same time, the Brumbies, who have struggled to attract crowds of more than 10,000 and last week weren’t awarded a World Cup fixture in 2017, have been the only Australian Super Rugby franchise since 2019 to make a semi-final of a fully-fledged competition.
The 2023 World Cup disaster, where the Wallabies failed to make it out of the pool stage for the first time after Eddie Jones was parachuted into the role after three underwhelming years on the scoreboard under Dave Rennie, only hurt the team’s reputation on the international stage even more.
However, Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies did manage to breathe back some life into the game at home and abroad when a Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii-inspired side beat England deep into stoppage time at Twickenham.
Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii helped inspire the Wallabies to a ground-breaking win at Twickenham. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)
A record win over Wales in Cardiff continued the side’s momentum, before they finished the year with consecutive defeats, including a heartbreaking 22-19 defeat to Ireland in Dublin.
Off the back of the encouraging tour, RA chief executive Phil Waugh released a new ‘From Green to Gold’ strategy, setting its sights on an ambitious 70 per cent win rate, a Lions series victory, winning the Bledisloe Cup every second year – a feat not achieved since 2002 – and a top four finish at the 2027 World Cup.
While the strategy resembled more of a series of lofty goals than any meaningful fresh ideas, Waugh acknowledged that the five-year plan relied on a significant uplift in broadcast revenue to support its high performance and pathway plans.
“The resourcing and the financial discipline across the ecosystem is the most important point,” Waugh said last December.
“Right now, we don’t have the revenue lines that we require to do everything we’d like to do, so therefore we have to prioritise different programs dependent on the revenues and then making sure that you’ve got the cost discipline across the organisation.”
The spruiked deal will be music to the ears of the playing group, with very little activity over the past two months regarding player recruitment and retention.
But it doesn’t mean players can expect RA to move on preliminary offers, with the governing body still hell-bent on slowing wage inflation.
