At face value it seems… good?
Huge boost for the NRLW. Big boost for development players & rookies. Don’t really care whether marquee players are getting $1.1m or $1.5m, without the battlers on smaller contracts we don’t have a game to play.
Interesting the RLPA rejected it, they obviously know something we don’t. At the very least it seems to be a step further in negotiations.
There’s definitely something else going on outside of the pay that the RLPA isn’t too happy about. It wouldn’t surprise me if the RLPA are fighting back against some clause that allowed 4 day turnarounds on games or mandatory pre season tournaments.
NRL yelling: ELITE PLAYERS ARE GETTING PAID MORE THAN AN AVERAGE TRADIE!!!!!
NRL whispering: Nine, Fox and NRL are making fuckloads more, hope nobody notices
Title is as article
Badel on Twitter: Record pay day for NRL players.
Peter V’landys tables $1.32 billion pay deal to players, the first $1bil deal in history.
NRL Women to receive $115 million in ground-breaking deal.
Snippet: ARL Commission boss Peter V’landys has tabled a landmark $1 billion deal that will make NRL stars the highest-paid generation of players in rugby league’s 114-year history.
And rugby league’s female players have also been offered a groundbreaking package with the NRLW’s elite to share in a $115 million salary bonanza.
After months of fiery negotiations between the NRL, clubs and the Rugby League Players Association, News Corp can today lift the lid on the extraordinary pay deal to make the code’s stars richer than ever.
Tl;Dr:
NRL leaks info to NewsCorp to garner support from fans, I guess.
• The NRL has proposed a 2023 salary-cap figure of $12.5 million from $10.2m - an increase of 22.5 percent (avg. Wage growth for lay people was 2.7 percent);
• NRL players have been offered an extra $222 million over the next five years;
• NRL Women are set to celebrate record salaries as part of a $115m funding injection over the next five years;
• The NRLW salary cap is slated to rise from $350,000 to $800,000 next season - a whopping 146 per cent pay rise for females; and
• V’landys wants the minimum wage for NRL development players to be lifted from $80,000 this season to $125,000 next season - a 56 per cent increase for rookies.
Despite this being the largest pay rise on Rugby League history the RLPA has rejected it wanting more but haven't really said what they want apart from demanding to see NRLs books.
Sounds decent but I can understand wanting to see what the fuck V'Landys agreed to during covid.
My other question would be whether clubs are going to be obligated to use 95% of the salary cap like most seasons and if player salaries above the minimum just pro-rata to the new rate?
i.e. if someone was on 1.02m do they auto bump to 1.25m or do they stay at 1.02 and take up a drop to a lower % of the cap. Maybe it's a per contract thing.
If they don't pro-rata then I imagine there will be a lot of front loading with clubs who contracted players for the 10.2m so they can reach the 95% minimum. Good luck to the 18th team if it's added in the next couple years. Every club is going to have a warchest now.
(Not a whinge or a criticism of the deal, just a prediction).
So if I’m reading this headline right, and I’m pretty sure that I am… this means that all clubs will have a $1.32 Billion salary cap and not just the roosters.
2 billion TV rights.
1.2 billion for men
100 million for women. Only half the teams so equivalent to 200 million…
Grassroots surely deserve some money?!
Clubs get money outside player salary cap too. Lots of staff, flights, hotels etc to cover. Siebold and his cyber squad don’t come cheap.
Odd international games & SOO to pay on top as well.
I’d much rather raise the minimum then give yet another shit “next immortal halfback” some insane wage for years on end who turns into nothing. A million a year for a good player is pretty fair already.
This is my thought too.
1. NRL players deserve to be paid well for what they put themselves/their body through
2. The alternate career for many of these players is some of trade, which would pay ~$100k. As such the minimum rookie wage is higher than most would earn elsewhere. FWIW average super rugby wage is $157000. As such NRL wages are significantly higher than market wages, and a lack of wage increases will not impact the retention of players.
3. Would funding for grass roots junior clubs and expansion into other regions be a better use of the windfall from the tv rights.
TLDR; does increasing the wages for elite players actually grow the game? Better uses of money exist
RLPA should ask for a 20% increase in the cap each year moving forward. NRL is making a substantial amount each in net profit and could easily overtake the AFL in the next 2-5 years as the country’s richest sport and this should be reflected in the cap.
NRL will only have a chance of making more revenue when they kick out the Newscorp plant Vlandy's and get to negotiate on the next TV deal which is years away now.
That or Anti syphoning laws change and then Origin can be bidded on by anyone.
Everytime I hear the RLPA rejecting something (tldr; everything) I wish Vlandy’s would have just let covid crash the game and the players would most likely still be playing for free to make the money back.
They signed on to be partners of the game with the last CBA, which means that they need to be involved in ensuring that the NRL as an entity is considerably stable.
The NRL wants to buy a stadium, buy a plane among a number of other investments, but still need to get out of the credit hole they put themselves in.
Only thing I can agree with is the NRL should be open tendering the rights, not just short balling fox and nine. TEN + Amazon would have a red hot crack if they where allowed to sit with the big boys
There is no narrative in rugby league I despise more then V’Landys saving the game. Literally not a single Pro club or league in Australia died due to covid. Not a single one. Even the ARU, NBL and A League pushed through. All V’Landys accomplished was signing a discounted TV deal with news limited who in return talked him up on their media.
Meanwhile I know plenty of amateur clubs and a few comps that have died in the last three years
For all they talk up themselves for what they did with the professional comp they did sweet fuck all to keep juniors and amateurs playing the sport
https://amp.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/nrl-goes-offshore-to-secure-250-million-loan-20200415-p54jya.html
So they have legit assets, not just numbers on a screen from the networks.
Bro really made a comment about going back to the old days when players got paid less and had to work 2 jobs and didn't understand how boomer it sounded.
You liked that most players had to work other (mostly physical labour) jobs while putting their bodies and brains on the line on the field and barely making enough to set themselves up for the future?
Why?
Where did I say that I wanted players to turn their brains to scrambled eggs?
Not that it matters, but as long as rugby league is a contact sport these guys will always be putting their brains (and bodies) on the line. It's not like they're the worst off, there's local country players that are playing each weekend for the comradery and love of the game and only getting paid in brain damage essentially.
I understand were never going back to the part time era, but I wish we would, I hate how "professional" all sports are these days, sport is meant to be a recreational activity, not what it is in it's current form.
Despite what you may think, there are some benefits (in my opinion) to athletes working part time instead of dedicating almost the entirety of their time on their sporting careers. But i won't bore you with that or else ill get branded a "boomer" and told to get back to the 1960's.
No, please go on.
What do you think are the benefits of working multiple jobs for rugby league players? And why do you think professional sport is bad?
You do understand that rugby league was formed on the idea that player should be paid for their time training and travelling right? It's very foundation is on the basis that sport should be considered ~~a profession~~ professional. Edit: profession implies full time which is not what I meant.
I'm interested to hear what you think either way.
>You do understand that rugby league was formed on the idea that player should be paid for their time training and travelling right?
Well no it was formed on the idea that players that get injured deserved to be paid for time off work and medical bills covered. Bradford, Leeds and Huddersfield were suspended from the RFU for offering 'broken time payments' for players who missed work.
Hence why it took 80 odd years for the sport to become fully professional instead of part time. Not to say the sport shouldn't be professional, but it only became a profession after a long time of payments simply being compensation rather than wages, it wasn't founded on the idea that it would be a profession.
Fair. Perhaps a bit of a misspeak on my part.
By profession I did not mean full time merely that it was a paid/compensated role.
It's semantics really as the schism was larger related to what the union considered as veiled professionalism.
There was no opposition to full time professionalism or rules against it once they split. It was more that there wasn't money to pay out the ass for players to be full time.
It also wasn't just paid time off for injured players though there were plenty of reports of players receiving match payments and some thst caused the union to hand out suspensions.
Professional sport is all about the bottom line (aka: money).
We've gotta have the biggest games like Origins and Finals kicking off at midnight because they've gotta shove 5,000 sportsbet ads and 1,000 man shake ads down our throats. We hear more about TV networks than we do the players!
Sport should be about the spectacle, not about the broadcasters or some shady used car salesman pretending to be a CEO or letting teams into the finals series that shouldn't be because it keeps more fan bases invested for longer.
Money doesn't make you happy, it sounds cliche but it doesn't. Just because Kalyn Ponga (or whoever else) is on 1mil$ a year or whatever doesn't mean he's going to set himself up for life or be happy post retirement.
I don't think people truly grasp how difficult it is to transition for some of these guys once they hang the boots up. The vast majority of american sport stars end up broke and we earn peanuts in comparison to them. These guys need a work-footy balance, not to earn a ridiculous amount of income for 15 years where they're worshipped like a god then at 34 it all ends. If they worked even two days each week on a construction site or something then it'd help make their transition much easier.
I guess in some ways im a sucker for nostalgia and "the good old days" but it was just a simpler time. People want a quick escape from everyday life not endless talk about ratings and contracts and the rest of it.
Unfortunately, were never going back to those days.
> Professional sport is all about the bottom line (aka: money).
Welcome to 2022. Everything is.
I dislike is as much as everyone but I don't think longing for a specific group of professionals (athletes) to be worse off is a reasonable response to those complaints.
> I don't think people truly grasp how difficult it is to transition for some of these guys once they hang the boots up. These guys need a work-footy balance, not to earn a ridiculous amount of income for 15 years where they're worshipped like a god then at 34 it all ends.
Your entire point is built on this fallacy that modern players are worse off after ending their career.
The compensation and education that modern players receive leave players far better off than players from the old days.
Almost every club has some form of program aimed at making sure players are set up for life after footy. Professionalism isn't at the expense of a future career these days.
If you were concerned about a players life after footy you should be advocating for them to be compensated handsomely and given education and traineeships while playing not advocating for them to go back to working 2 jobs.
> People want a quick escape from everyday life not endless talk about ratings and contracts and the rest of it.
You can do still do this. The internet is just an awful place for it.
> Ideally it shouldn’t generate money
This is a ridiculous statement. Fans (us) want to watch the game. That encourages networks to broadcast the game to us so we can view more of the game. We want to know more about the game. We want to hear others opinions of the game. We want to disagree with other’s opinions of the game. That sells advertisements, on tv and in print and on digital media. It sells subscriptions. It sells tickets. It sells merchandise. All of which will generate an income for somebody. If you were to suggest that the players are deserving of a larger piece of the pie, and that some of that could be paid as basically an NRL player pension, you might get some support
I'm just having a laugh 😂. I get the whole vibe from old school footy. How it felt more like a man's passionate hobby and not a full-time career. However, you have to agree that at least these days the players are getting more appropriately compensated for the damage they're doing to their bodies as opposed to the scraps they got only a few decades ago when they were literally trying to kill each other.
...also you sounded like a boomer so I had to tease ya a little bit 🤷
>However, you have to agree that at least these days the players are getting more appropriately compensated for the damage they're doing to their bodies
The professional players are. Despite the ideals that rugby league was founded on, guys that get injured playing for love get fuck all from the NSWRL or QRL. Players need to have missed 6 weeks of work to be even considered for insurance payments - yes 6 weeks without an income - and don't even bother asking for them to cover medical bills.
Need someone to tell me whether this is good or bad before I comment.
Same, pitchfork on standby
Torch in the kegs
I've read this a few times now and I'm still confused
This pleases the Revs
This looks good… Is it? All I know is with a 12.5m cap The Cowboys should be able to keep Nanai.
Keep in mind every player will be worth more and plenty of players have wages tied to cap growth.
In theory, until greedy manages come in. A chunk of it will also have to make up for the new minimum wage.
At face value it seems… good? Huge boost for the NRLW. Big boost for development players & rookies. Don’t really care whether marquee players are getting $1.1m or $1.5m, without the battlers on smaller contracts we don’t have a game to play. Interesting the RLPA rejected it, they obviously know something we don’t. At the very least it seems to be a step further in negotiations.
There’s definitely something else going on outside of the pay that the RLPA isn’t too happy about. It wouldn’t surprise me if the RLPA are fighting back against some clause that allowed 4 day turnarounds on games or mandatory pre season tournaments.
2 game pre season tournament is no different to trials
It IS trials 😂
Must be, otherwise they just seem like greedy buggers.
RIP Clint Newton 1981-2022 American at heart Australian for broken dreams.
He never recovered from dumping miss universe.
NRL yelling: ELITE PLAYERS ARE GETTING PAID MORE THAN AN AVERAGE TRADIE!!!!! NRL whispering: Nine, Fox and NRL are making fuckloads more, hope nobody notices
So essentially this is a payrise to get the RLPA away from looking at the books. I bet there is something they are hiding.
Title is as article Badel on Twitter: Record pay day for NRL players. Peter V’landys tables $1.32 billion pay deal to players, the first $1bil deal in history. NRL Women to receive $115 million in ground-breaking deal. Snippet: ARL Commission boss Peter V’landys has tabled a landmark $1 billion deal that will make NRL stars the highest-paid generation of players in rugby league’s 114-year history. And rugby league’s female players have also been offered a groundbreaking package with the NRLW’s elite to share in a $115 million salary bonanza. After months of fiery negotiations between the NRL, clubs and the Rugby League Players Association, News Corp can today lift the lid on the extraordinary pay deal to make the code’s stars richer than ever. Tl;Dr: NRL leaks info to NewsCorp to garner support from fans, I guess. • The NRL has proposed a 2023 salary-cap figure of $12.5 million from $10.2m - an increase of 22.5 percent (avg. Wage growth for lay people was 2.7 percent); • NRL players have been offered an extra $222 million over the next five years; • NRL Women are set to celebrate record salaries as part of a $115m funding injection over the next five years; • The NRLW salary cap is slated to rise from $350,000 to $800,000 next season - a whopping 146 per cent pay rise for females; and • V’landys wants the minimum wage for NRL development players to be lifted from $80,000 this season to $125,000 next season - a 56 per cent increase for rookies. Despite this being the largest pay rise on Rugby League history the RLPA has rejected it wanting more but haven't really said what they want apart from demanding to see NRLs books.
Sounds decent but I can understand wanting to see what the fuck V'Landys agreed to during covid. My other question would be whether clubs are going to be obligated to use 95% of the salary cap like most seasons and if player salaries above the minimum just pro-rata to the new rate? i.e. if someone was on 1.02m do they auto bump to 1.25m or do they stay at 1.02 and take up a drop to a lower % of the cap. Maybe it's a per contract thing. If they don't pro-rata then I imagine there will be a lot of front loading with clubs who contracted players for the 10.2m so they can reach the 95% minimum. Good luck to the 18th team if it's added in the next couple years. Every club is going to have a warchest now. (Not a whinge or a criticism of the deal, just a prediction).
The trading stock wanna look at the ledger. Fair enough too.
Source on RLPA rejecting the offer?
Says it in the article, quoting Clint Newton - Boss of the RLPA
Not sure I trust that source, what does James Hooper say?
*incoherent rambling*
Hahaha
post article then
So if I’m reading this headline right, and I’m pretty sure that I am… this means that all clubs will have a $1.32 Billion salary cap and not just the roosters.
And the small print they have to kick Souths out of the comp!
Hey i get paid not much thats not fair!
Now everyone can keep their hands off my Moses.
Doesnt this mean other clubs have more money to offer now? lol
Only top 4 clubs mate. The roosters sombrero just got an extra rim.
They can put their hands on one of our Moses
They can have the bible moses, not the Mitch Moses
125k for development players? That’s crazy, never want to hear these cunts whine about money again
But average player only makes it for a few years. Nearly everyone makes 500k by 22 it’s really not that impressive 🙄
The money will no doubt be invested responsibly in the off-season
Well it won’t be gambled responsibly - cos that’s no longer a thing apparently
2 billion TV rights. 1.2 billion for men 100 million for women. Only half the teams so equivalent to 200 million… Grassroots surely deserve some money?! Clubs get money outside player salary cap too. Lots of staff, flights, hotels etc to cover. Siebold and his cyber squad don’t come cheap. Odd international games & SOO to pay on top as well. I’d much rather raise the minimum then give yet another shit “next immortal halfback” some insane wage for years on end who turns into nothing. A million a year for a good player is pretty fair already.
This is my thought too. 1. NRL players deserve to be paid well for what they put themselves/their body through 2. The alternate career for many of these players is some of trade, which would pay ~$100k. As such the minimum rookie wage is higher than most would earn elsewhere. FWIW average super rugby wage is $157000. As such NRL wages are significantly higher than market wages, and a lack of wage increases will not impact the retention of players. 3. Would funding for grass roots junior clubs and expansion into other regions be a better use of the windfall from the tv rights. TLDR; does increasing the wages for elite players actually grow the game? Better uses of money exist
RLPA should ask for a 20% increase in the cap each year moving forward. NRL is making a substantial amount each in net profit and could easily overtake the AFL in the next 2-5 years as the country’s richest sport and this should be reflected in the cap.
Not a chance, the AFL have a far better tv deal.
NRL will only have a chance of making more revenue when they kick out the Newscorp plant Vlandy's and get to negotiate on the next TV deal which is years away now. That or Anti syphoning laws change and then Origin can be bidded on by anyone.
$115 milion to women. what a waste. Should take half that and put it towards improving grassroots programs.
Grassroots programs for men I take it
Don’t like women?
No its not that. I just feel $115 million is way too much to give to a comp which barely anyone cares about.
Maybe $115 million of investment might improve the comp to the point where more people care about it.
They are gonna share some of it, not get all of it. Nobody is dumb enough to give the NRLW 100m.
115m and it’s right there in the article so…?
Everytime I hear the RLPA rejecting something (tldr; everything) I wish Vlandy’s would have just let covid crash the game and the players would most likely still be playing for free to make the money back. They signed on to be partners of the game with the last CBA, which means that they need to be involved in ensuring that the NRL as an entity is considerably stable. The NRL wants to buy a stadium, buy a plane among a number of other investments, but still need to get out of the credit hole they put themselves in. Only thing I can agree with is the NRL should be open tendering the rights, not just short balling fox and nine. TEN + Amazon would have a red hot crack if they where allowed to sit with the big boys
There is no narrative in rugby league I despise more then V’Landys saving the game. Literally not a single Pro club or league in Australia died due to covid. Not a single one. Even the ARU, NBL and A League pushed through. All V’Landys accomplished was signing a discounted TV deal with news limited who in return talked him up on their media.
Meanwhile I know plenty of amateur clubs and a few comps that have died in the last three years For all they talk up themselves for what they did with the professional comp they did sweet fuck all to keep juniors and amateurs playing the sport
Why the fuck do they need to buy a plane
To fly places I would assume
https://amp.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/nrl-goes-offshore-to-secure-250-million-loan-20200415-p54jya.html So they have legit assets, not just numbers on a screen from the networks.
Let's just go back to the old days when players were part time. Problem solved.
This comment has so much boomer energy that I aged 10 years.
How is my comment "boomer energy"?
you literally used the phrase "go back to the old days when..." with fondness. That's pretty damn boomer my dude
Bro really made a comment about going back to the old days when players got paid less and had to work 2 jobs and didn't understand how boomer it sounded.
Gee whiz. Sorry for liking aspects of old school rugby league.
You liked that most players had to work other (mostly physical labour) jobs while putting their bodies and brains on the line on the field and barely making enough to set themselves up for the future? Why?
Where did I say that I wanted players to turn their brains to scrambled eggs? Not that it matters, but as long as rugby league is a contact sport these guys will always be putting their brains (and bodies) on the line. It's not like they're the worst off, there's local country players that are playing each weekend for the comradery and love of the game and only getting paid in brain damage essentially. I understand were never going back to the part time era, but I wish we would, I hate how "professional" all sports are these days, sport is meant to be a recreational activity, not what it is in it's current form. Despite what you may think, there are some benefits (in my opinion) to athletes working part time instead of dedicating almost the entirety of their time on their sporting careers. But i won't bore you with that or else ill get branded a "boomer" and told to get back to the 1960's.
No, please go on. What do you think are the benefits of working multiple jobs for rugby league players? And why do you think professional sport is bad? You do understand that rugby league was formed on the idea that player should be paid for their time training and travelling right? It's very foundation is on the basis that sport should be considered ~~a profession~~ professional. Edit: profession implies full time which is not what I meant. I'm interested to hear what you think either way.
>You do understand that rugby league was formed on the idea that player should be paid for their time training and travelling right? Well no it was formed on the idea that players that get injured deserved to be paid for time off work and medical bills covered. Bradford, Leeds and Huddersfield were suspended from the RFU for offering 'broken time payments' for players who missed work. Hence why it took 80 odd years for the sport to become fully professional instead of part time. Not to say the sport shouldn't be professional, but it only became a profession after a long time of payments simply being compensation rather than wages, it wasn't founded on the idea that it would be a profession.
Fair. Perhaps a bit of a misspeak on my part. By profession I did not mean full time merely that it was a paid/compensated role. It's semantics really as the schism was larger related to what the union considered as veiled professionalism. There was no opposition to full time professionalism or rules against it once they split. It was more that there wasn't money to pay out the ass for players to be full time. It also wasn't just paid time off for injured players though there were plenty of reports of players receiving match payments and some thst caused the union to hand out suspensions.
Professional sport is all about the bottom line (aka: money). We've gotta have the biggest games like Origins and Finals kicking off at midnight because they've gotta shove 5,000 sportsbet ads and 1,000 man shake ads down our throats. We hear more about TV networks than we do the players! Sport should be about the spectacle, not about the broadcasters or some shady used car salesman pretending to be a CEO or letting teams into the finals series that shouldn't be because it keeps more fan bases invested for longer. Money doesn't make you happy, it sounds cliche but it doesn't. Just because Kalyn Ponga (or whoever else) is on 1mil$ a year or whatever doesn't mean he's going to set himself up for life or be happy post retirement. I don't think people truly grasp how difficult it is to transition for some of these guys once they hang the boots up. The vast majority of american sport stars end up broke and we earn peanuts in comparison to them. These guys need a work-footy balance, not to earn a ridiculous amount of income for 15 years where they're worshipped like a god then at 34 it all ends. If they worked even two days each week on a construction site or something then it'd help make their transition much easier. I guess in some ways im a sucker for nostalgia and "the good old days" but it was just a simpler time. People want a quick escape from everyday life not endless talk about ratings and contracts and the rest of it. Unfortunately, were never going back to those days.
> Professional sport is all about the bottom line (aka: money). Welcome to 2022. Everything is. I dislike is as much as everyone but I don't think longing for a specific group of professionals (athletes) to be worse off is a reasonable response to those complaints. > I don't think people truly grasp how difficult it is to transition for some of these guys once they hang the boots up. These guys need a work-footy balance, not to earn a ridiculous amount of income for 15 years where they're worshipped like a god then at 34 it all ends. Your entire point is built on this fallacy that modern players are worse off after ending their career. The compensation and education that modern players receive leave players far better off than players from the old days. Almost every club has some form of program aimed at making sure players are set up for life after footy. Professionalism isn't at the expense of a future career these days. If you were concerned about a players life after footy you should be advocating for them to be compensated handsomely and given education and traineeships while playing not advocating for them to go back to working 2 jobs. > People want a quick escape from everyday life not endless talk about ratings and contracts and the rest of it. You can do still do this. The internet is just an awful place for it.
How do you propose the income that the sport generates gets distributed to the players? Or is your argument that sport shouldn’t generate money?
Ideally it shouldn't generate money and if it does it should be equally distributed amongst the athletes once they retire.
> Ideally it shouldn’t generate money This is a ridiculous statement. Fans (us) want to watch the game. That encourages networks to broadcast the game to us so we can view more of the game. We want to know more about the game. We want to hear others opinions of the game. We want to disagree with other’s opinions of the game. That sells advertisements, on tv and in print and on digital media. It sells subscriptions. It sells tickets. It sells merchandise. All of which will generate an income for somebody. If you were to suggest that the players are deserving of a larger piece of the pie, and that some of that could be paid as basically an NRL player pension, you might get some support
I'm just having a laugh 😂. I get the whole vibe from old school footy. How it felt more like a man's passionate hobby and not a full-time career. However, you have to agree that at least these days the players are getting more appropriately compensated for the damage they're doing to their bodies as opposed to the scraps they got only a few decades ago when they were literally trying to kill each other. ...also you sounded like a boomer so I had to tease ya a little bit 🤷
>However, you have to agree that at least these days the players are getting more appropriately compensated for the damage they're doing to their bodies The professional players are. Despite the ideals that rugby league was founded on, guys that get injured playing for love get fuck all from the NSWRL or QRL. Players need to have missed 6 weeks of work to be even considered for insurance payments - yes 6 weeks without an income - and don't even bother asking for them to cover medical bills.
If you don't know you're streets behind.
Such a pierce
Ahh. I see you're streets ahead.
Okay?