Quote ="gutterfax"Good news, but TV Cash didn't drive the Auckland 9's and the viewing figures here peaked at ITM cup levels (145k/175k) over the 2 days.
The Drivers were Ticket Sales and Council sponsorship.......with the Auckland Council "underwriting" the comp being the key that opened to the door to the NRL clubs taking part.
Mar is great and shooting from the hip and the more I hear of him, the more I like the fella, but he needs to think things through......
For example, 12pm-7pm over 2 days in UAE is 7.30pm - 2.30am in Sydney, 9.30pm - 4.30am in New Zealand and 8am to 3pm in the UK.........his Imaginary TV deal would need to either pander to the UK market or the Australasian market and 14 hours of competition isn't going to attract enough money to cover the airfare of the competing teams. Not sure what a combined peak audience of 420k between Australia and New Zealand is worth to a TV company, but I'd suspect, not a lot......and that's only if you get the timing right to suit that market, with an 8am start local time...which I suspect isn't going to happen.
Sevens stadium can hold the 50k each day that would generate decent ticket sales, but is the audience there? The other lot have the advantage of multiple nationalities being involved, but would NRL/SL clubs be the same draw card?
Hey, I like the Dr and I hope he can pull something off that in turn could see some serious cash injected into the game if he gets a rich buddy or 2 interested, but as I say, he does need to think things through!'"
Only way it could work would be to hold it as a series ie MW, Dubai, Auckland over the course of the year . That would then attract both hemispheres, international sponsors, more TV interest etc.
You could have a Europe Nines for MW featuring SL and French clubs, a World Nines featuring Int teams in Dubai and NRL Nines in Auckland and link them together under same banner. Problem is everything the NRL touches at the moment turns to gold (literally!) so would be no motivation at this end to change what has proved a winning formula in Auckland.
