Pacific Theatre of Operations

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“It remains a great privilege to be the CEO of such a successful sport and business,” says the National

Rugby League’s (NRL) David Gallop. “It has its ups and downs from time to time but the more you do it the more you get used to the fact that they are ups and downs, and as long as your numbers are tracking in the right direction, you can take some comfort from that.”

That Gallop is being interview one month after the final whistle was blown on what was the second-highest attended NRL season – producing an average attendance of 17,235 per game with a Grand Final attracting 81,988 spectators – probably goes some way to explaining his relaxed demeanour.

“We had an outstanding year in terms of our key performance indicators – crowds, television ratings and junior participation numbers,” he says. “We probably exceeded expectation.”

Gallop, the very public face of Australian rugby league, is speaking from a Kensington hotel that overlooks London’s Hyde Park. In Europe to witness November’s international rugby league double-header at Wembley as part of the 2011 Four Nations, and also to discuss the Rugby Football League’s (RFL) ongoing preparations for the 2013 Rugby League World Cup, the NRL’s former in-house lawyer explains that his fleeting visit is all part of business as usual at Australia’s second-most popular sports league.

“The business doesn’t change that much on or off season,” says Gallop, who was appointed chief executive almost exactly ten years ago. “Obviously the day-to-day issues

of football happen during the season but the commercial aspect of the business is 365 days of the year. Certainly during this time of the year we spend a bit of time planning for the following season and conducting reviews with stakeholders – next week we hold a big sponsors conference with the game’s partners where we review the year and talk about plans for next year and we do a similar thing with our clubs.”

Reflecting on the year past and on the past ten years as a whole, Gallop points to

both on-field and off-field strengths, namely the structure of the competition and the community spirit of its clubs and players, as some of the key factors in a decade of sustained growth. “I think that ten to 15 years ago the game was pretty fractured and people had lost a lot of confidence in rugby league because of what happened in the mid-90s,” he says, referring to a period in rugby league history commonly known as the ‘Super League war’ where in 1997, following a corporate dispute over broadcasting rights, two Australian professional rugby league competitions were run side by side before their eventual merger to create today’s NRL.

“I always talk about the two things we have to get right in terms of the on-field competition,” Gallop continues. “Exciting

games where you get to see the skills of the players and having a league where any team can win. We’ve built that through things like our salary cap system which has really been bedded down and matured to the point where it’s definitely working.” Initially introduced following the league’s inception in 1998, the NRL’s current salary model operates with both a cap of AUS$4.3 million and a floor of AUS$4.21875 million. It is a structure which Gallop and the NRL believe both spreads the playing talent across the league and removes the necessity for teams to spend more than they can afford in order to remain competitive. “That’s one of the great attractions of our competition because it’s unparalleled in terms of closeness. Every year the gap between 1st and 16th has narrowed to the point where that old NFL adage of ‘any team can win on any Sunday’ is really working for us and we’ve got to be careful not to dilute that.

“Also, off the field, we’ve put a lot of focus in the last few years into our community work,” says Gallop. “Our players did 28,000 hours’ worth of work in the community and I’d like to think that we’re regarded in Australian sport now as being the best in making a positive difference off the field. We have a big education component where we’re involved in things like nutrition and reading programmes in schools. Our indigenous focus has been important for us and reputationally I think the game is in a better place than it has been for many years. From time to time we’ve got to deal with player behaviour issues and the damage that does

David Gallop is one of the foremost faces in the Australian sports industry. The chief executive of the National Rugby League (NRL) can point to successes on and off the field during his decade in charge and insists, despite his critics, that more is on the way.

The Pacific TheaTre of oPeraTions

By Tom Love. Photographs by Graham Fudger.

“We had an outstanding year in terms of our key

performance indicators.”

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– and rugby league has had its fair share of that in the last couple of decades – but I think we’re regarded now as dealing with those issues well.”

Gallop’s last point is crucial, for while the standing of the NRL may have improved in recent years, the spectre of player behaviour incidents continues to be a frequent caller. Indeed, amidst the countless alcohol-fuelled scandals, a number of high-profile rugby league personalities are in court charged with involvement in a betting scandal while in November 2010, in perhaps the most bizarre NRL scandal of all, a photo emerged of Canberra Raiders player Joel Monaghan simulating a sex act with a team-mate’s dog.

Though indiscretions in any sport are damaging from a commercial perspective, given the saturated Australian sports marketplace, scandalous headlines are a particularly unwelcome sight for the league’s organisers. “There’s no doubt that if you don’t deal with that kind of thing properly then it can have an enormous impact,” says Gallop. “As opposed to, say, the UK, where football sits so far above anything else, the winter codes really do battle for space in Australia and if you don’t deal with that stuff appropriately then you can fall behind reputationally.”

Despite the seemingly inevitable regularity of such lurid affairs – which more often than not come hand in hand with sobering warnings from the game’s sponsors – the NRL and its clubs have for the most part retained their partners and Gallop remains confident about the current health of the league with its fans.

“Our research suggests that we’ve shifted a good chunk of people from casual rugby league consumers – people who maybe went to two or three games a year but were probably sampling other football codes at the same time – to a more avid status,” explains Gallop, before rattling off some figures. “We’ve had a big membership drive in the last five years; we grew membership another 28 per cent this year so our football clubs are getting up around 200,000 total membership now – which is a big number from a pretty small base. That means that there are a good chunk of people who National Rugby League chief executive David Gallop, pictured in London on Thursday 3rd November



are dedicated to just our sport now and are going to eight or nine of their team’s games a year, wearing their team’s jerseys and not just being casual fans.”

Television ratings, too, are an area of some pride for the league’s organisers. “We probably hit some TV numbers – particularly around things like Monday Night Football, which we’ve only been doing for a few years now – that exceeded our expectation,” he says in reference to a matchday slot reintroduced in 2007 that, though not necessarily popular with clubs and players, has been welcomed by television audiences and at a crucial juncture in the league’s existence. “We’re about to enter into a formal negotiation period for our television rights for the next five years so it was the right time to have a successful season and all the numbers tracked upwards.”

Due for completion “in the first half of 2012, in time for a 2013 start”, the sale of the NRL’s media rights, using its existing domestic TV deal as a base, represents around 55 per cent of the league’s total revenue, and the size of the final rights fee will have profound impact on the scope of Australian rugby league’s ability to grow in all areas for years to come. “We’re careful not to put a target number out there, but at the same time we’re conscious of the result that the AFL achieved,” Gallop says of the five-year, AUS$1.25 billion deal struck between the Australian Football League and broadcasters Foxtel, Telstra and the Seven Network in April 2011. “In a way, we should take confidence from that result, because it shows that there is an appetite for live and compelling sport in our country and that broadcasters and media companies, regardless of platform, have recognised the value of live sport.”

The NRL, however, is careful not to take confidence from every move that the AFL makes and has good reason to be wary given the dominance of Australia’s most popular football code in a number of the country’s major cities. By far and away the most commercially successful competition in Australia and currently the third best attended domestic sports league in the world, with an average attendance of

approximately 37,000, Gallop describes the AFL as “a big, big machine in our country”, adding: “They’re cashed up and we can’t afford to be complacent about them.”

Indeed, though Gallop reveals that from “time to time” the leagues will take a

collaborative approach on governance and meet to discuss issues affecting both sports, such as sports betting, alcohol sponsorship, he adds, steely-eyed: “At the end of the day they’re a competitor and have to treat them as such.

“We have to view them in that way

“Rugby league in Australia is about to undergo a big change in terms of its administrative structure. We’re moving from a structure where News Corp owned half the game to a structure where News Corp are exiting and we’re collapsing, effectively, three governing bodies into one and creating a so-called commission structure where eight people with no previous affiliation to the game will be set up as the governing body. It’s effectively going to be the merging of the professional end of the game with the grassroots of the game. There’s an opportunity to create something that sets strategic direction for the whole game so that’s a big change. It was supposed to

come into effect from 1st October but it’s taken a bit longer than we anticipated.

“It’s been a big exercise in bedding that down and the bedding down of the legal framework to put it in place. The Rugby Football League International Federation has recently restructured to a more efficient model as well. Now the three major countries of England, Australia and New Zealand have one vote and then the European Federation and the Asia-Pacific federation have one each. It’s in a pretty embryonic stage at the moment but I think it’s the right move for the game and I think we’ll see some benefit from it in terms of streamlining decision making in the next few years in the build-up to the next World Cup.

Holding a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Australian National University and a law degree from the University of Sydney, David Gallop first became involved in the sport of rugby league as an administrator in 1995 when he served as legal affairs manager for the News Corporation-owned Super League. Since the Super League’s 1998 merger with the Australian Rugby League, Gallop has been heavily involved in the overall direction of the National Rugby League and in February 2002 was named the league’s chief executive.

As well as successfully steering the NRL for the past decade, the 46-year-old sits on the board of the Rugby League International Federation and – as one of the most recognised and well-respected sports administrators in Australia – also acts as the deputy chair of the Australian Sports Commission.

feaTUre | RUGBY

Gallop on rugby league’s administrative structure

David Gallop



because they’ve made some fairly aggressive moves into our space. They’ve signed a couple of our best players in the past couple of years and they’ve moved into two of our traditional heartlands in Western Sydney

and South East Queensland.” And yet, despite the AFL’s founding of

the Gold Coast Suns and Greater Western Sydney franchises in 2009, in locations that have formerly always been the NRL’s

main theatre of operations, Gallop insists that now is the time for cool heads and once again turns to figures to make his point. “There are a lot of people in our game who think the sky is falling down,” he says incredulously. “We need to be more confident in how we are placed in areas like Western Sydney because our numbers suggest that we have 25,000 registered players in Western Sydney and they [the AFL] have got 3,000. There’s no doubt that the move by the AFL has galvanised our efforts in putting some improvements in the way we go about our development programmes so in that regard it’s probably not been a bad thing for us.”

Indeed, regardless of the eventual figure produced by the NRL’s media rights negotiations – current estimates range from an optimistic AU$1.4 billion to the more realistic AU$1 billion – as with the AFL, expansion of the league has been high on the agenda for a number of years now. However, if Gallop gets his way, fans will have to wait a little longer still. “Expansion, if and when it comes, shouldn’t be till about 2015 when we’ve given our existing 16 clubs an opportunity to benefit from a big windfall for the first couple of years. There is a realisation that our clubs have been behind the eight-ball financially for a while now,” he says before adding that, following the conclusion of the media rights, the priority in the first couple of years after any expansion will be “to get more money into the hands of our existing clubs and players.”

Despite the best stalling tactics by Gallop in order to hold back the league’s expansion, a move that he believes is necessary to avoid player strength and monetary issues, such is the desire to found an NRL team in some areas of Australia and the Pacific Islands that a number of efforts have already launched in order to get an early start on the competition, a position recognised by Gallop. “Yeah, there have already been some unsolicited bids in areas where they are chomping at the bit,” he chuckles. As to what will ultimately determine the winning bid or bids when a decision is eventually made, Gallop points to range of factors with “the sustainability within their own

Fox Soccer now screens the State of Origin game between Queensland and New South Wales in the USA

Wests Tigers’ Blake Ayshford (left) is one of 25,000 registered players in NRL stronghold Western Sydney

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business model, the ability for them to grow something that benefits everybody and the strategic position of other sports” topping the list.

“We’ve got to be thinking about all those things when the time is right,” he says, “and also be aware that we’ve got to give ourselves about 18 months to two years lead time before they [the expansion team] start playing. In the Australian sports market, you can’t afford to be thinking that you’ll be given ten years to be successful on the field. It’s got to be sooner than that in order to get people engaged.”

Gallop remains coy on where he believes the eventual expansion team or teams will be located, but dismisses the possibility of a retaliatory move into the AFL’s traditional heartland. “We’ve been in Melbourne for a while now,” he says, pointing to the creation of the Melbourne Storm in 1998. “Our numbers are pretty encouraging down there but the AFL is big business, especially in that area, and we can’t do much more than develop a good niche because it’s a cluttered market with two Melbourne soccer teams and nine AFL teams.”

With manoeuvres into Melbourne effectively ruled out, other targets include the seemingly lower-risk locations of Brisbane, North Sydney and Queensland on Australia’s western coast, the more ambitious locations of Adelaide and Perth, cities deep in Australian rules football territory, or overseas moves into the Pacific Islands of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, all of which have strong rugby league heritage but perhaps not the fanbase necessary to establish a beachhead.

While expansion to Papua New Guinea and Fiji seem unlikely at the current point in time, Gallop insists that he both realises and respects the strength of the game in the Pacific and specifically in New Zealand – a country whose national team are the current Rugby League World Cup holders and whose only NRL team, the Warriors, reached the final of the 2011 NRL season – but stops short of pinning his colours to a bid from across the Tasman Sea. “You can underestimate the strength of the game in New Zealand and the fact that a lot of those Pacific Island heritage players are

coming out of New Zealand as well. You only have to look at the number of kids that are coming out of New Zealand and into all of our clubs to see that the nursery is pretty healthy. We’ve got some plans, which are admittedly in their early stages, around continuing to strengthen the game in New Zealand. However, I think that it’s taken a long time for the Warriors to become a successful on a sustained basis and you’ve got to be careful not to dilute that.”

With expansion plans, in Gallop’s mind at least, on hold until at least 2015, the NRL’s other development plans are further afield but significantly more timely. Across the Pacific, the size and sophistication of the US market means that the country is a target for many a sport, and rugby league is no different. Though rugby union has traditionally always been more popular in

the States when held up against its sister code, league has a history in the US that dates back to the 1950s. Indeed, on the infrequent occasions when the country has hosted a number of exhibition matches the sport has been relatively well received – the most recent fixture saw the NRL’s South Sydney Rabbitohs take on English Super League champions Leeds Rhinos in a one-off match that took place in Jacksonville, Florida in 2007 and drew a crowd of 12,500.

“One of the benefits of our game in the US market is that it’s really simple to follow,” says Gallop, who is confident that the NRL will continue to gain traction in the country. “Compared to rugby union, there is not so much you need to understand about the rules and there is a sufficient similarity with American football – like the six tackle rule – that means Americans can pick it up quite easily.”

Aiming to assist that education process through exposure on US television networks and aided by an unlikely ally in the form of Australian film star and

Rabbitohs owner Russell Crowe, in May 2011 the NRL secured a deal that would see Fox Sports broadcast its biggest games live on the Fox Soccer channel. “We had the Grand Final and the State of Origin on Fox this year,” says Gallop, referring to the NRL’s championship game and the markedly more popular three-game series contested by representative sides from the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales. “Australians underestimate how big Russell Crowe is in America. He can open doors and his passion for the Rabbitohs, where he’s taken every opportunity to promote the team, has been a good thing for us. With a bit of help from Russell and his relationship with David Hill, who is an Australian who is well-known to everyone in international broadcasting because he’s been so successful in the UK with BSkyB and now with Fox Sports, we got on Fox this year.”

And, in spite of the 5:30am EST live broadcast time in the US, Gallop adds that, following the deal’s success, the league is currently in talks with Fox about the next couple of years. “The numbers were pretty encouraging so we expect to see a bit more of that next year with hopefully the opportunity to do some weekly highlights packaging as well.”

Asked whether he can envisage a time when NRL games will be being broadcast regularly on US cable, a huge milestone for any domestic US league let alone one from abroad, Gallop responds with a resounding “yes” – but when pressed for a target year he plays down the need for a specific date and instead cites improvements in all aspects of the game as the ultimate goal.

“People love to think that you can gaze into a crystal ball and see targets for the future but in reality constant growth is what you should be hoping to see and from that perspective,” he reflects, “I think that the NRL has cause for optimism. Rugby league is almost uniquely self-critical. People heavily scrutinise the game and where that is happening you’ll inevitably get criticism.

“It can be frustrating at times but by and large I think our decisions have been the right ones and will continue to be in the future.”

feaTUre | RUGBY

“one of the benefits of our game in the Us market is that

it’s really simple to follow.”


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