"Important to us": V'Landys hopeful to secure Super League deal

Having secured the biggest TV rights deal in Australian sporting history, ARLC Chairman Peter V’Landys already has his eye on how the NRL can continue its global expansion.

It’s been an incredible week for the competition, having secured $5.3 billion over seven years for its broadcast rights, which will help future-proof the game for the next 20 to 50 years, in the words of V’Landys, while the deciding Game III in State of Origin last Wednesday amassed its highest-ever TV rating in the series history.

Having had so much success in recent years, the competition has been keen to capitalise, planning to expand to 19 teams by 2028, with a 20th team potentially coming in 2029, which would see the NRL played regularly across three nations.

Another idea to help the NRL’s global expansion has been its potential involvement/investment in the English Super League.

Since 2024, reports have emerged about the NRL being interested in buying a stake in the competition to help improve the financial state of the competition.

Those discussions between the NRL and RFL (English governing body) have been put on the back burner for the last couple of months as negotiations for their next TV rights deal took shape.

But with that now signed and sealed, the soon-to-be interim executive chairman has the Super League high on his agenda once more, noting that the 14-team could be facing a massive train crash if their financial issues cannot be resolved.

“We've been totally focused in the last two (to) three months on this broadcast deal, so we now will turn our minds to Super League,” he told SEN’s Kick Off.

“It's important for us to have Super League strong and vibrant.

“There's no secret that they've got financial problems over there, and if they don't fix them, they'll have a massive train crash. We don't want to see that.

“We want to see Super League thrive in England. It's important to us, it's important to the international game, it's important to sell the game globally.

“So, we'll certainly be looking at the Super League in much greater detail in the next few weeks, and hopefully we'll be able to do some deal.”

The Super League is currently in Week 18 of its 27-round season.