Canteen Worker link said:
Do you get rid of profitable and popular teams like Manly just to keep a team in Adelaide, in order to sell Pay TV??? Happy for teams to die but to force teams to merge and fold was never on. Game was healthy in 95 and I reckon if Mr Murdoch had his time over again he wouldn't have bothered.
Yeah, CW. If you could cut the number of Sydney teams to say four, without disaffecting the fans, and expanded to include major cities, regional centres and capitals, then that may appear ideal if your goal was to expand the game. We all understand that concept.Â
But what hope of ever doing that successfully without a master plan, and what hope when done in a hostile takeover of the sport? Where was the plan to get fans on-side?Â
We all know Gallop is a News Ltd stooge. And that he was the key lawyer used by News Ltd to poach players from the ARL. So the Gallop/News Ltd plan is to sell free-to-air TV in Melbourne and Victorian cities to show after midnight???? That is a master plan for expansion?
If they were serious about expanding the game, then they would do much better selling the free to air rights in say Victoria (better still Australia-wide) for $1 to the ABC on condition they show the football in prime viewing timeslots. Real sports fanatics would rather watch sport on the ABC than a current affairs program on channel Nine.
Less income in the short-term with the prospect of massive increases in TV viewing public, greater sponsorship of teams, etc.