What will Rugby League look like from 2024, when we will see new broadcasting contracts following the expiration of the current broadcasting contract with Sky Sports at the end of 2023?
A committee headed by Leeds Rhinos chief executive Gary Hetherington is considering what structure for the game would be likely to generate more income from broadcasters in the succeeding years.
I have made several submissions to Gary, outlining what I would like to see.
And one of those concerns Nines Rugby League, which the RFL is theoretically committed to expanding but shows few public signs of doing anything positive to promote that version of the game.
In my view, Nines Rugby League is a perfect vehicle for bringing all sections of the professional game together while developing a product that would have undoubted value to broadcasters, if organised and presented imaginatively.
And of course we shouldn’t forget that International Rugby League, the governing body of the game globally, is committed to holding regular World Cup tournaments for Nines Rugby League, which could be a perfect way to introduce new nations to major international competitions.
So, given that we have a very crowded club calendar how could we organise Nines Rugby League successfully?
The obvious time to play Nines would be Bank Holiday Mondays, of which there are four during the regular season – Easter Monday, the two May Bank Holidays and the August Bank Holiday – when most people are on holiday and are keen to get outside and enjoy themselves in a family setting.
The best approach would be to have nine clubs drawn from all sections of the professional game playing at each event in three groups of three, with women’s teams also taking part, perhaps in one group of three at each event.
The two top men’s team and the top women’s team from each event could go through to a finals day, which would therefore involve eight men’s teams and four women’s teams.
In a previous article I have written that we should have a two-week gap before the Super League Grand Final.
I’ve made that suggestion for pragmatic reasons.
It’s not unreasonable now to think that either Catalans or Toulouse could qualify for the Grand Final at any time in the future.
A fortnight’s gap between the semi-finals and the Grand Final would give far more time to build up the Grand Final and to sell more tickets. And if a French team did qualify again, it would give its supporters more time to buy tickets and organise passports and travel. In 2021 that was clearly too big a problem for many of the Catalans’ supporters in such a short space of time.
So we should be prepared to learn from other sports.
In this case, we should copy the NFL, who always have a fortnight’s gap before they have the Super Bowl. They use the first of those two weeks to hype the game up and to make their players and coaching staff available to the media. In doing that they generate massive audiences and great interest in the game.
The English media, on the other hand, have very little time to organise preview material of our Grand Final because of the short period between the semi-finals and the Grand Final and because clubs don’t want to provide access to players during the week of the game. With a two-week gap, all the preview material could be collected in the first week, more tickets could be sold and the clubs left to their own devices in the second week.
So the two-week gap before the Grand Final could be filled in by Nines finals day on the Saturday or Sunday prior to the Grand Final, with eight men’s teams playing off for a trophy and four women’s teams.
I think we could draw a decent crowd for that event and a Nines tournament of that sort running from Easter Monday onwards on Bank Holiday Mondays, and with the final event in the week before the Grand Final would surely be attractive to broadcasters and therefore to sponsors.
If someone has a better idea for Nines Rugby League, I would be interested to hear it.
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