Billion-dollar pay offer for players
BUT RLPA REJECTS DEAL
ARL Commission boss Peter V’landys has tabled a landmark $1bn deal that will make NRL stars the highest-paid generation of players in rugby league’s 114-year history.
And rugby league’s female players have also been offered a groundbreaking package with the NRLW’s elite to share in a $115m salary bonanza.
After months of fiery negotiations between the NRL, clubs and the Rugby League Players Association, News Corp can lift the lid on the extraordinary pay deal to make the code’s stars richer than ever.
Incredibly, the seven-figure deal – which would finally seal rugby league’s most lucrative Collective Bargaining Agreement – has been rejected by the RLPA.
Top-secret documents obtained by News Corp show the NRL has offered a record $1.32bn deal to the code’s 510 full-time stars over the next five years – the first $1bn pay deal for players in the sport’s history.
The previous five-year deal was worth $980m. The NRL’s latest offer represents a 34 per cent funding increase and would lift the average men’s salary from $325,000 to $400,000 next season.
That’s a pay rise of 23 per cent.
At a time when the nation’s wage growth is 2.7 per cent, NRL players stand to receive a pay rise 10 times that of the average Australian.
The average NRL player’s proposed $400,000 salary is more than four times the national average wage of $92,000.
Australia and Queensland Origin hooker Harry Grant has lashed the NRL, accusing League Central of “lowballing” the players, but these figures are emphatic evidence the code’s professionals are in line for record pay days.
Contacted by News Corp, V’landys was tight-lipped, saying: “The negotiations are at a sensitive stage. We are comfortable with the offer we have made to the players, but we won’t be negotiating in the media.”
V’landys and NRL CEO Andrew Abdo hope to finalise a $300m funding deal to the 17 clubs this month.
Then the NRL duo will attempt to convince the RLPA to accept the $1.32bn pay bonanza for players, a scenario that would finally deliver the code’s CBA ahead of the 2023 premiership.
The NRL has been accused of hiding the code’s finances, but these proposed pay figures are in the hands of RLPA boss Clint Newton, who has previously warned V’landys and Abdo of the dangers of acting like a “dictatorship”.
Newton is as frustrated as anyone by the delay in CBA talks, which were originally planned to be concluded midseason but have now dragged on beyond October 31, when the existing agreement expired.
The RLPA boss insists he is not looking to have V’landys dethroned as ARLC chairman, but vowed to continue to fight for player rights.