Good. He hastened the transition from RL to netball more than any CEO I can remember. And his ticket pricing scheme is ludicrous.
Seems to make sense that he leaves now, he's achieved everything we ever really needed from someone with a strong financial background. The business has been scaled well, governance has improved ten fold, we're finally getting TV deals that reflect our value, all other main revenue streams have all more than doubled and we've finally secured significant funds for new/improved Stadia infrastructure. Things we could only dream about 3 years ago. The biggest disappointment of his reign will be his inability to improve crowds, although in fairness the funds secured for new infrastructure will go a long way to fixing that. It'll be interesting to see who they pick moving forward, personally I find it hard to have any faith in John Grant. Shane Richardson seems like the obvious choice.
Good to see positive comments about Smith TBH. As you say, he has done a great job as far as the NRL product goes. A heap of people gave him shit for not matching AFL's figure, but in all honesty, the NRL product just isn't as lucrative as AFL's is. The cash being thrown at the NRL for broadcasting rights is more than it's worth IMO, and as a CEO, that's the key outcome you're looking for; make your product command more value than warranted.
Yeah NRL gets more TV viewers on average throughout the whole season and just recently it's starting to win for ratings in the big games as well.
You're selling less advertising space though. It's a shorter product with less ad breaks. The value isn't simply based on the number of viewers.
Yeah, also AFL has more games to sell as well as a far greater reach to the western states. It just naturally attracts greater appeal. Having said that, the AFL should be getting a considerably larger tv deal than it currently is.
The only reason AFL got so much was because Murdoch was pissed at NRL. Who cares how much the AFL get anyway? That shitty sport shouldn't be talked about in the same conversation as league
It's really concerning just how much of say News Ltd still have in our game, there's no doubt they've played a role in all of it. Nearly 20 years on and they're still the biggest cancer in our game.
Yeah I'd like to see the evidence for that. Suppose that's the nice way of saying he drove crowds down.
