It is a truism of professional sport that television gets what television wants. TV is the ultimate arbiter of who plays what, where and when. It is by far the wealthiest stakeholder and thus carries the loudest megaphone. TV may not be god, but it is all powerful.
The rugby league relocation and expansion chatter still bopping about in our popular presses – after the NRL threw out the burley for all we fish to feed on – has come because Foxtel and Channel Nine would like another 80 minutes of entertainment each week with which to sell advertising space and set top boxes.
The Broncos are Friday night ratings gold and naturally TV’s suits and sales types would like more of it. These people have thus suggested to the NRL that TV needs more games in Brisbane because all those league-loving eyeballs would mean more people watching.
TV is why there was a Super League war which ultimately kicked out Souths. 80,000 people marched in the streets to protest against it and against how “big media” was running “their” game. It was a popular movement, and ultimately the Bunnies found a way back. But thereare many who can never forgive.
Cronulla, Manly and Wests Tigers supporters would not be able to forgive should their clubs shifted from their locales. The Sharks have been around since 1967, the Sea Eagles since 1947. There are no more parochial people (outside, say, Queenslanders) in the land. In 2000, fans of Balmain Tigers (est. 1908) and Western Suburbs Magpies (also 1908) saw their clubs merged into a new entity. Less than 20 years later they’re being asked to countenance losing the club from the city in which they live.
The NRL’s new licensing agreement would have it that clubs have to prove solvency should they wish to remain part of the NRL. And one can understand, from a business perspective, why dropping a financial basket case for a new entity – let’s say Redcliffe Dolphins – resident in a high-rating league city would make sense.
But relocation? Rugby league is tribal. You wear the colours of your team like you own them. They’re yours. Relocating the colours of Manly or the Sharks or Tigers would not, surely, be edifying for existing fans nor potential new ones. You’d greatly disenfranchise the former and fail to energise many of the latter given – let’s call them the people of Perth – would be aware that “their” new team is a second-hand one from Sydney.
Could a Brisbane franchise take Cronulla’s colours as the Lions took Fitzroy’s? Would Wests Tigers play out of Perth? Could Manly play out of Perth? You’d have to say they could not. Not with their soul intact. And knowing Manly fans, they’d sooner see the club bite the dust than head west, just as Souths chose to be nothing rather than merge with the Sharks.
Thus the most palatable – if not financial – solution to television’s desire to add 80 minutes a week in fresh metro markets would appear to be an 18-team NRL competition. Keep the current 16 in the tent and add Brisbane and Perth as standalone entities. Brisbane makes sense, it’s league land. But Perth? The jury is out. Yes, there are two million people. Yes, there’ll be an Origin game at their crackerjack new stadium. Yes, there once were the Western Reds.
Yet rugby league seems to think – given its inherent belief that it actually is the greatest game of all games – that it can pitch itself into a foreign culture and flourish. Because, hey, it’s rugby league, why wouldn’t they love it? The rationale goes that after Rugby Australia brushed Western Force, it begat an opportunity for rugby league. You might say the same of the Japanese Sunwolves.
Local, “cultural” support for rugby union doesn’t necessarily mean instant support for rugby league. Force fans remain Force fans – Twiggy Forrest is still in there swinging. And you can’t create culture, not immediately. Eyeballs aren’t the only arbiter, otherwise there’d be another team in Melbourne, population four million. Melbourne, though, has rather strong cultural bedrock called the Australian Football League, the teams of which millions of Melburnians hold great emotional allegiance.
For sure, the Storm have become a great success in Melbourne. Each home game they draw up to 20,000 people to see them blitz opponents in the modern, purpose-built AAMI Stadium. And yet in 20 years of Melbourne Storm, the number of NRL players bred from the Melbourne competition is three.
Meanwhile axing or otherwise shifting the Tigers would seem a strange one given they represent both the outer and inner west of Sydney, a catchment of humanity described as upwards of 2 million people. Expansion to Perth (population 2 million) at the cost of the western Sydney team would appear a zero sum game at best.
Then again, would they march for Wests as they marched for Souths? Would they march for Manly when they did not for North Sydney Bears? Manly had no compunction about taking over the wretched Northern Eagles and casting Norths into the abyss. Were Manly on the chopping block, Bears fans would enjoy the schadenfreude – and even contemplate taking over the licence and plonking a red-and-black team in northern Sydney where there are 600,000 people without a team.
Regardless, it all does seem a lot of kerfuffle so that Channel Nine can charge bookmakers to peddle their wares on the airwaves.
