I’m going to cut to the chase very quickly.
Why on earth are we playing NRL games in Perth if the NRL isn’t serious about the next expansion team coming from Western Australia?
The NRL would be better off taking more games to the bush or to an area where they are genuinely serious about expansion.
But after the rollercoaster of the last week, I suspect this story has a couple more twists and turns to come.
In the lead-up to the double header on Saturday afternoon it looked like the NRL had botched the expansion negotiations. There were concerns from the NRL side about the AFL’s popularity in the state and there were also whispers that the bid from the Western Australian government was well below the NRL’s expectations.
This is at least the second time that a bid has been considered ‘financially below expectations’ after the NRL rejected a big from a private consortium late in 2024 because it did not include payment of the NRL license fee in its initial bid.
It was an incredibly stupid time to put the bid on ice, with a double-header in Perth this weekend. Instead of drumming up positive interest in the game, the argy bargy during the week did the opposite and the NRL administration was rewarded for it with their worst crowd for a regular season double header event in Perth.
The crowd was 31,437; over 14,000 fewer fans compared to the double header played in Perth last year.
Following the snubbing, the discourse coming was that the NRL had treated the West Australian citizens as a “cash cow”. There also seemed to be reluctance from fans and officials about the North Sydney Bears being a key element of any expansion bid.
ARL Commission chair Peter V’landys is a keen expansionist but he has been clever in the past and outsourced the risk associated with expansion. The Dolphins already had an established brand and Leagues Club in a league loving area and the Papua New Guinea team, which will enter the competition in 2028, is backed by an eye watering $600 million dollar Australian government investment in the region.
But when it comes to risk, Perth is a completely different kettle of fish. A city with a population of over 2.3 million people, a higher than average per household income and advanced sporting infrastructure; the city presents great opportunities.
But compared to areas like Moreton Bay and Port Moresby, there is limited entrenched rugby league support, grassroots programs are passionate but small and there hasn’t been a full-time rugby league presence in the state since the 1990s.
Greg Florimo and North Sydney Bears fans at North Sydney Oval. (Photo by Getty Images)
The city is and always will be an AFL stronghold and the underwhelming crowd figures and TV ratings of Perth based teams like the Perth Glory (A-leagues) and Western Force (Super Rugby Pacific) show just how challenging the market can be.
V’landys and his team were attempting to mitigate these risks by coaxing record investment from the WA Government and shoe-horning in the current NSW Cup team, the North Sydney Bears. These two moves appear to have backfired.
Expecting the WA citizens to get behind a team that has the identity of a harbourside suburb of a city over 3800km away and the taxpayer to pay hundreds of millions for the privilege is outright fanciful, and the WA Government and its citizens response this week has been telling.
By kick-off on Saturday afternoon, the NRL had begun to implement severe damage control. They were able to ensure WA premier Roger Cook’s attendance and host broadcaster Fox Sports beaming multiple pictures of his smiling face in the crowd with messaging that the bid was still well and truly alive. But the damage had been done.
If rugby league wants the N in NRL to truly mean national, it needs to expand into markets like Western Australia, but trying to do it with teams like the North Sydney Bears and trying to force local taxpayers to foot the bill is not the right approach.
Expansion is hard, clubs need to be successful from the start and to do that they need to engage local fans immediately. The country is littered with failed expansion bids and I don’t want the NRL to be the next one in an already long list.
A 20-team NRL comp makes a lot of sense. It helps clean up the draw, it gives the competition more content while easing player drain. Teams like Perth add new time zones and tap into bring in a large potential fan base, but unless that fan base engages immediately, the discourse will be around poor crowds, unsustainable travel times and NRL once again being insignificant in AFL markets.
It’s a wasted opportunity when the Perth bid can be so much more than that; especially if its actually for Western Australians.
It’s now being reported that negotiations will continue again this week.
I genuinely feel like the expansion conversation is just like Donald Trump’s tariffs in the United States. One day they are on. The next day they are off. Then they are back on again. It’s confusing and exhausting.
But this back and forth creates nothing but uncertainty.
Should a team not go ahead in Perth, not only does it kick to the curb a potential new market, but it also undermines the commitment the NRL has had to taking various games and big events to Perth. It also leaves a potential new market gone begging and big questions about where team number 20 will come from.
