Nine boss Hugh Marks lifts lid on broadcast negotiations

After two months of tense negotiations with the NRL, Nine chief executive Hugh Marks sat down with the Herald to discuss the new broadcast deal.

Cricket and rugby league. They’ve been part of Channel Nine’s fabric for decades. But in the space of two years, the free-to-air network almost lost both of them.

“We didn’t lose cricket,” Marks interrupts during an interview inside his Willoughby office a day after announcing a revised broadcast deal until the end of 2022. “But it’s a great example of where we were at with rugby league.”

“When we were going through those discussions with cricket management (in 2018), I didn’t see a shared vision for the game. Part of our issue with cricket was the extension in the number of games in the Big Bash and the way the Big Bash was taking absolute priority over international cricket. That was actually a big part of why we walked away at the time. With rugby league it was the same thing.”

Marks stands by claims he would have walked away from rugby league had Nine’s vision not aligned with the NRL’s. He also stands by the fact he would have battled it out in a courtroom if it had come to it.

“There was this mentality that the NRL was superior,” he said of the Todd Greenberg era.

“We don’t buy the NRL, we buy a competition of 16 clubs, State of Origin and grand final. OK, the NRL is the organisation that we deal with, but the competition that you’re buying is the players and the clubs – that’s what you’re buying.

“There was this superior attitude from the NRL towards the clubs, towards us, the broadcasters. Out of this crisis, all of that has been put behind us and everyone is recognising what is actually important.”

There’s no doubt the bottom line was of greatest importance to the free-to-air network, but it wasn’t just a reduced rate Nine wanted before re-linking its future with the sport.

“Why do people watch rugby league?” Marks asks after securing an estimated $70 million in savings over the next three years.

“Because they want to watch Parra play the Bulldogs. That tribalism of the game is its actual strength. And how do you enhance tribalism? You enhance it by empowering the clubs to do more. If money is going into things like administration, or the bunker, or integrity units, or multiple referees or a digital platform – money isn’t going to clubs.

“You wanted to feel like the rugby league management were committed to the sorts of things that we feel warrant us investing in the game for the long term. Even the simple things, like if the match-day experience is fantastic, more fans will go to the game and more people will watch it on television.”

THE ATTACK ON TODD GREENBERG

On April 9, just over two weeks after the NRL brought the competition to a halt as a result of COVID-19, Nine sent out a…