Dave Smith leads rugby league into a new era

With registrations for junior winter sports commencing this weekend and competition between the football codes as keen as ever, rugby league is seen to be in a robust state as the 2014 season approached.

Buffetted by scandals involving doping and the off field behaviour of players, the sport is set to deliver a financial surplus in the "tens of millions of dollars" in the first year during which NRL Chief Executive Dave Smith has been in post.

Turning around a $3.5 million loss in the previous year and buoyed by Australia's triumph at the 2013 Rugby League World Cup, the former banker is intent on developing new revenue streams for the game beyond its largest ever TV broadcast deal worth in excess of $1 billion over five years.

In a recent interview with Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Smith "it doesn't make good business sense to be so dependent on one thing (TV broadcast rights) - we need to de-risk the game from the five-year media rights cycle."

Smith revealed that he wants to develop new revenue streams that would eventually deliver more than $100 million extra a year to secure the game's future.

At the moment, only 28% of the game's revenues - about $100 million a year - come from non-media sources, such as sponsorships, merchandising sales and membership fees.

Revealing that about $210 million a year comes through the five-year TV broadcast rights deal and $50 million through digital media streams, Smith added "my goal is to have 50% of the game's revenue coming from sources outside the media deal.

"We have to build the balance sheet as we have no income generating assets - given how old the game is, it just tells you that financial management is so important."

Smith is believed to be considering having the NRL become involved in financing future stadiums, mindful that club controlled stadia in the USA and UK deliver higher revenues for their owners.

He is understood to be due to begin detailed discussions in 2014 with Federal and State Governments about stadium funding, mindful that, beyond election funding promises, there may be less public money available for stadium developments in the coming years.

Smith wants the NRL and its clubs to create revenue to support itself to ensure "every dollar of the media deal" goes directly to the 16 NRL clubs, grassroots development and into an investment fund for the future.

He told The Daily Telegraph that an extra $50 million could be generated by growing the game's membership base from 230,000 to 400,000 by 2017 - one of his major goals.

Here Smith stated, "our number one priority is the game's members and fans and we have been working with our clubs to transform membership to make members' experiences more rewarding."

He also wants to build digital engagement with fans, concluding "one of the big things happening across the world of sport is a concentration on growing digital engagement with fans to build closer, direct relationships."

However, this is likely to be through new and yet-to-be developed media as rugby league already has the biggest social media following of any Australian football code, with almost 4.7 million followers on Twitter and Facebook, up 30% from March.

With crowds down 2.9% this year, Smith said the NRL would struggle to draw bigger crowds unless the membership base grew substantially, concluding "we've been basically doing the same thing over the past 10 years and unless you make an effort to do something different, you end up with the same result."