Tweet
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...9322a75e91f266
Paul Kent, The Daily Telegraph.
Footy is life for Reggie The Rabbit, a symbol for how much the game means to fans. He’s never been paid a dollar and like so many in the game he wants to know how the NRL wasted over $1.8 billion.
Footy was his life. Everything in his life that mattered was connected to football.
And now it was a life being threatened because the game failed to insulate its future.
For almost nine years, since the independent Commission took over running the game, the NRL has squandered millions of dollars with barely a button to show for it.
Earlier this week the NRL opened the books to the clubs, a chance to explain how they will fund their way out of this coronavirus crisis.
It made for heavy reading.
Nobody knows how the game will recover but what cannot be disputed is the game has recklessly squandered millions of dollars in cash, with nothing to show for it.
Where has the money gone?
Stories of waste have followed the ARL Commission and NRL executive almost from the moment the game got its independence in 2012 and the billion dollars in television money that soon followed.
Limousines and hire cars, bloated staff numbers on bloated wages, unnecessary costs like the millions to stage February’s Nines in Perth, where there are no plans for expansion, which so no real gain, gifts of diamond rings …
Criticism at the NRL’s performance was always swiftly deflected.
Legitimate criticisms were massaged, denied, straight out lied about or twisted to make it appear the single-minded agenda of “crisis merchants”.
The NRL’s 2019 annual report, available on its website, declared $528 million total revenue last year.
Allocated money from that went to clubs ($228m), the NSW Rugby League and QRL ($47m) and development ($41m). There was $30 million profit.
The remaining $182 million, a staggering amount, was soaked up in NRL “running costs”.
Here again the NRL’s deception is evident. Administration costs were $20 million. On that, it doesn’t seem a lot was spent on staffing the NRL.
But it hides the truth.
Only some NRL wages were included in that. The $3.3 million spent on integrity and salary cap, for example, includes the wages of those staff.
The community and player welfare unit, for another example of largesse, spent $17 million — which includes their wages.
Then there is the football department ($25 million), insurance and finance ($12 million) and their event, game and sponsorship, a stunning $103 million.
Nobody knows how NRL is actually spending this money or if it is money well spent.
I know for certain many wages within the media unit are almost double market rate given what some staff have requested in negotiations to leave.
But when it is over an inquiry has to be launched into how the NRL has mismanaged its finances, spending $1.9 billion in broadcast money these past nine years with no assets, growth or war chest to show for it.
The $104 million in the bank reduces to $55 million when the $49 million deferred liability is taken off (to be paid in 2022), with just another $15 million in debtors to top up cash reserves.
Government mismanagement of this size would demand a Royal Commission.
Paul Kent, The Daily Telegraph.
Footy is life for Reggie The Rabbit, a symbol for how much the game means to fans. He’s never been paid a dollar and like so many in the game he wants to know how the NRL wasted over $1.8 billion.
Footy was his life. Everything in his life that mattered was connected to football.
And now it was a life being threatened because the game failed to insulate its future.
For almost nine years, since the independent Commission took over running the game, the NRL has squandered millions of dollars with barely a button to show for it.
Earlier this week the NRL opened the books to the clubs, a chance to explain how they will fund their way out of this coronavirus crisis.
It made for heavy reading.
Nobody knows how the game will recover but what cannot be disputed is the game has recklessly squandered millions of dollars in cash, with nothing to show for it.
Where has the money gone?
Stories of waste have followed the ARL Commission and NRL executive almost from the moment the game got its independence in 2012 and the billion dollars in television money that soon followed.
Limousines and hire cars, bloated staff numbers on bloated wages, unnecessary costs like the millions to stage February’s Nines in Perth, where there are no plans for expansion, which so no real gain, gifts of diamond rings …
Criticism at the NRL’s performance was always swiftly deflected.
Legitimate criticisms were massaged, denied, straight out lied about or twisted to make it appear the single-minded agenda of “crisis merchants”.
The NRL’s 2019 annual report, available on its website, declared $528 million total revenue last year.
Allocated money from that went to clubs ($228m), the NSW Rugby League and QRL ($47m) and development ($41m). There was $30 million profit.
The remaining $182 million, a staggering amount, was soaked up in NRL “running costs”.
Here again the NRL’s deception is evident. Administration costs were $20 million. On that, it doesn’t seem a lot was spent on staffing the NRL.
But it hides the truth.
Only some NRL wages were included in that. The $3.3 million spent on integrity and salary cap, for example, includes the wages of those staff.
The community and player welfare unit, for another example of largesse, spent $17 million — which includes their wages.
Then there is the football department ($25 million), insurance and finance ($12 million) and their event, game and sponsorship, a stunning $103 million.
Nobody knows how NRL is actually spending this money or if it is money well spent.
I know for certain many wages within the media unit are almost double market rate given what some staff have requested in negotiations to leave.
But when it is over an inquiry has to be launched into how the NRL has mismanaged its finances, spending $1.9 billion in broadcast money these past nine years with no assets, growth or war chest to show for it.
The $104 million in the bank reduces to $55 million when the $49 million deferred liability is taken off (to be paid in 2022), with just another $15 million in debtors to top up cash reserves.
Government mismanagement of this size would demand a Royal Commission.
Comment