From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Monday, June nine, twenty twenty five. Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison leads a list of Australians tapped for King's Birthday honors, which also includes filmmaking duo Baz Luhrman and Katherine Martin, and author jmcurtsey. You can check out the full list at the Australian dot com AU. Today inside the country's most intriguing media story, a walloping NRL versus
AFL feud that's centered on a new battleground. Perth. Western Australia is resolute AFL territory. So why on Earth is rugby league bringing a superstar coach and a whole lot of taxpayers money to the West. That's today's story, Football, money and media. It's a combination guarantee to produce drama. Ted Lasso, Let's pretend this is Ted Lasso Season four.
Okay, so hey, why don't we just jump right in? Anybody got any questions?
Perth twenty twenty five, the launch of a new rugby league team deep in AFL territory. We've got an angry billionaire hostile hometown press pack, an all powerful sporting titan, a trouble making Tyrow CEO and a legendary coach on massive money.
Yeah, this is a fucking joke.
The Perth Bears have launched with triumph and fanfare if you're the NRL and crickets. If you're the population of Perth who are busily enjoying the usual sun kissed winter ritual of Ossie rules, glory.
You good thing. Heys kicked.
Don't get around the way from.
Everywhere Hudson walk on. I think he's what This game of footing.
For the same crimes expand is a thing sporting codes like to try, and Rugby League has tried this before with the Adelaide Rams. They lasted two seasons and multiple iterations of a Perth team, but the people of the West have remained stubbornly indifferent.
The more teams you have, that's how you get the biggest broadcast deal. More teams equals more games equals more time slots equals more money.
Steve Jackson writes The Australian's Media Diary.
So Peter Velandi's very savvy media player. He knows this is how he gets the best deal Perth P and G and then the next plan will probably be a second New Zealand team. Now they're not targeting where they think the best fan bases are or where they might actually develop the game. What it's about is timeslots. So they want a team in Perth, that's another time zone. They want a second team in New Zealand because then they can have a dedicated New Zealand game every week
that's another time zone. So it's a really strategic play to ensure that they can get the most money for their sports rights.
NRL boss Peter Valandi's, who also runs Racing New South Wales, is one of the most influential figures in sport politics and media thanks to his control of the vast budgets, partnership rights revenues and advertising spends of both those sports. One media organization he hasn't been able to charm is seven West, which also owns the West Australian newspaper. Well, I think the media coverage has been a bit biased in the sense that the main newspaper here is owned by seven West.
Media that has the AFL rights. Where's we be quite frank so that they don't want us to be here because they realize we're going to be competitive and we're going to take some of their lunch and we eat a lot.
The NRL has a two billion dollar broadcast deal that runs through to the end of twenty twenty seven with nine Entertainment and Foxtel, which shows games on its ko Play. If everything goes to plan, the Perth Bears will start playing in either twenty twenty seven or twenty twenty eight, just in time for Valandies to try and get that two billion dollar deal up to three billion for the
next five years. The AFL's broadcast deal is with seven West Media and its owner Kerry Stokes, a mining billionaire who absolutely loves Aussie rules. Usually when seven covers league, it tends to be brief and grudging. Indeed, Seven has devoted very slim coverage to the launch of the Bears, including Friday's public debut of their new coach, a genuine superstar of rugby league, Malmoninger.
I feel very honored, very nervous. I think it's a huge responsibility, but I believe I'm up for it.
The Perth Bears new CEO, Anthony de Segli, is a former newspaper editor and seven News director.
We've gone from one bear and me to two bears in melt Bear.
Here's where it gets interesting. Desegli is a protege of seven West Media owner Kerry Stokes. Peter Vilandi's might have thought hiring a Stokes loyalist to run the game in WA would help with media relationships. So far, that hasn't worked out. The local paper, The West Australian, which is also owned by Kerry Stokes, has taken to calling the team the bad News Bears.
Basically, that's seven West Media doing the exact opposite of rolling out the welcome Matt. They're saying, this is our turf, we don't want you here, We're not going to support you.
Look.
The West Australian is edited by Christopher dre who's made it very clear he doesn't think that Perth people are interested in rugby league and he doesn't think they should be paying for it through their taxes.
Here's Deceegli again.
Yeah, I mean, I think The West Australian is doing what all tabloid newspapers should do right, which is create provocative front pages that get people talking. At the end of the day, it'll be up to the PERF bears to earn the respect of the daily newspaper and earn the respect of the sports pages, so that the PERF bears you deserve to be alongside the coverage of the AFL teams. And if we're a success on the field, and if we're a success off the field, then we
should be in those sports pages. And if we're not, the only people missing out will be the readers of the newspaper.
It's a sensational media feud.
It's probably one of the biggest media storms we've seen it in a long time. We've got De Segli, who was quite popular when he was running the West Australian, came into the TV division and look, some people have described his job there as a suicide mission. He came in, he made a lot of cuts, he lost a lot of friends very quickly, and now he's gone somewhere where he's basically the enemy of the network and all those rivals he's created along the way, this is their chance
how to get square. Of course, a lot of his decisions at seven were extremely unpopular. He introduced to Friday Night funny Man, to the serious news bulletin. He trumped that even by then bringing in a psychic to appear on the news each night, and so we're seeing him be ridiculed by the people that he put off side,
but also basically told we're not going to support you. Now, how much of that is because seven owns the AFL rights and doesn't want to support the NRL the rival code, and how much of that is people looking to get square with Dicegee on a personal basis. We're going to see that unfold over the coming months.
You're reporting in the Media Diary today that your sources at seven are telling you that before Decegely went to the Bears, he was very enthusiastic about rugby league coverage. What was that all about?
They have said in at seven that he got increasingly passionate about rugby league in his last few months there. Of course, the other school of thought is that Decegely realized that in cities like Sydney and Brisbane you need to pume up your rugby league coverage in the news bulletins if you want to have a chance of winning the ratings.
We've both worked with Anthony de Sigli over the years. The media is actually quite a small industry. In Australia. He's a very smart guy, he's very ambitious and he obviously understands the media very well.
Do you think it.
Matters for the success of the Perth Bears whether or not they get positive or any coverage from the West Australian and seven News.
The thing about television news in my experience is they go with what rates. So while some media outlets might have a hit list of people who aren't to be mentioned or topics that can't be shown, when it comes to television ratings are it and so if the NRL is going to rate in Perth, they will put it on, they'll cover it. If it's not going to rate, you won't see a lick of it. And at the moment they don't think it's going to be rating, so they're not going to show it. Will it make any difference?
I think it will because more fans follow usport when there's on television, but also they get more time on television once they become more popular and have more fans. The question is will it win a fan base? Well, all we know for sure is that they're not going to get any help in that task.
Coming up. Is anyone going to pay three billion dollars for the National Rugby League broadcast rights and if so who A bit of Landy's big experiment was taking NRL to Las Vegas. He said at the time that the part of the idea was to develop an American fan base for the game. Clearly that's not going to happen, but it has generated pretty great ratings for the broadcast partners here in Australia and Australian Rugby League fans going over to Las Vegas to have a holiday and watch
the games. The current NRL rights deal is going to expire at the end of twenty twenty seven, and Velandi's has said he wants to get three billion dollars. How is he actual they're going to achieve that.
Look, he's probably going to have to divide and conquer. No one's going to own all the rights to all the games the week in week out NRL games. You're probably going to see them go to the Zone, which is obviously invested in Australia and bought Foxtel and Fox Sports because they want those rights. You're going to see a free to air provider be bidding. It's most likely going to be nine seven is indicated they're not interested
in the weekly games. They might be interested in one state of origin, but the way he's going to do it, divide up the regular season, maybe sell off the final series as a separate entity, and then the state of origin games they'll definitely go to another bidder. What he wants to target is Amazon, Netflix stand Sport, which is
building up it's sporting showcase. We know that Sports sells Sport Drive subscriptions, so these are the big international entities he needs to attract if he's going to maximize the amount of money he's going to get for the rights. Because it's no longer just the domestic television network works who are going to raise the price. He needs the international streamers.
Steve Jackson writes The Australian's Media Diary, it's live now on our app and our website. Our subscribers get all the scoops from media to sport and everything in between, and right now a subscription is just four dollars a week for the first four weeks. Join us at the Australian dot com dot au