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With the NRL and Super League potentially looking at a 2028 partnership, I think there’s an opportunity here that goes well beyond the NRL simply investing money into the English competition.

When Peter V’landys spoke in Vegas earlier this year, he floated the idea of NRL and Super League clubs becoming something like brother and sister clubs, mentoring each other rather than turning Super League into a feeder competition.

I think that’s exactly where this partnership should be heading. But I’d take it a step further.

1. Formal club to club partnerships
Every Super League club could be partnered with an NRL club, creating a direct relationship between the two competitions.

Not just a handshake agreement either. Proper partnerships covering coaching, recruitment, administration, commercial operations, academies and player development. These can have expiry dates just like player or sponsorship contracts, with a bearing on eligibility.

North Queensland and Hull KR have already demonstrated that this sort of arrangement is possible.
English clubs have over a century of history and experience to contribute themselves. This shouldn’t be a one-way arrangement where the Australians tell everyone how to run their clubs.

2. Linked player pathways between competitions

This is where the true value is.

Imagine a young Australian player who is stuck behind an established first grader being offered the opportunity to spend a season playing Super League with his club’s English partner.

Likewise, a promising English player could spend time in an NRL development system without necessarily having to abandon his English club.

Players, coaches and development staff could move between the two competitions through structured agreements.

There is a certain gap that cannot be filled by NSW or QLD Cup competitions alone. There is a layer of youth talent that is too good for semi-pro football and not yet established at the top tier. The NRL’s 30-player top squad, alongside its supplementary and development arrangements, still leaves limited opportunities for some of these players to gain regular first-grade experience.
Rather than competing against each other for every player, the clubs would have an incentive to develop talent together.

3. Synchronise and increase minimum player wages
For me, this is the unsung hero of the NRL’s latest rise to prominence. There is a plausible argument that this is one of the key drivers attracting young New Zealand rugby union talent towards NRL pathways.

Both competitions should agree on a progressively increasing minimum professional player salary, with the aim of establishing comparable minimum earnings across the NRL and Super League.

This would mean that a player moving between the two competitions shouldn’t automatically have to accept a lower standard of living simply because he’s playing in England rather than Australia.

Currency, taxation and living costs would obviously need to be considered, but a coordinated minimum salary framework would give players greater security and make movement in both directions more attractive.
Importantly, the minimum should increase in both competitions, rather than simply holding Australian salaries down to achieve parity.

Super League would need a staged increase in its salary cap and commercial revenues to support it.

The NRL’s 2028 partnership could be accompanied by a coordinated player-representation agreement, not just commercial and club partnerships. The timing is significant, as the Australian RLPA’s collective bargaining agreement ends in 2027. There are some important discussions needed in the next 12 months on this front.

Equally important is strengthening the British Rugby League Players Association, which currently operates through the GMB union. It needs the independence, resources and player support necessary to negotiate effectively with Super League and work alongside the Australian RLPA on these baseline issues.

4. Protect the clubs developing the players
One obvious concern is that this simply creates an easier pathway for the NRL to take the best English players. (See the British RLPA’s further importance above.)

There should be agreed development compensation for clubs that produce players who subsequently move overseas, along with protections around contracts and loans.

English clubs should actually benefit financially from producing quality players, rather than continually losing them without adequate compensation.

The same principle should also work in reverse. However, the NRL will surely approach this issue from a position of strength, which makes negotiating these protections in advance even more important.

5. Share the commercial expertise
The NRL has developed a strong commercial operation, but some of its greatest expertise sits within the clubs themselves.

Unlocking expertise in membership programmes, sponsorship, merchandise, game-day operations, digital engagement and community development could benefit both sides through direct club partnerships. It is a very different environment in the UK, but the shared pool of ideas should be welcomed and not hamstrung.

The subtlety is that it would also give Australian supporters a reason to follow a particular English club and vice versa, not just the player. DAZN’s reported talks with Super League to show up to four matches each week in 2027 could be a good barometer of the potential audience for this.

Fox League’s cross-promotions and interviews could give us a glimpse of what might be possible if the DAZN deal goes ahead in 2027, particularly if Australian broadcasters also give English clubs greater exposure.

Furthermore, it could lead to reciprocal memberships, joint merchandise and preseason fixtures.

6. Build towards a genuinely international competition structure
No, I do not mean World Club Championship 2.0. I’d like, however, to see the seasons progressively aligned, with protected international windows.

The Ashes should be treated as a major commercial property, and the Challenge Cup should retain its place as one of rugby league’s great historic competitions.

There should be a genuine effort to elevate the Challenge Cup internationally, including greater exposure through Australian broadcasters. It is one of the oldest competitions in rugby league and deserves to be treated as a major event in its own right.

The World Club Challenge should also have a permanent place in the calendar, rather than being dependent on the availability and willingness of the participating clubs each year.

The aim shouldn’t be to turn Super League into an English version of the NRL. It should be to build two strong competitions that complement each other.

The Outcome

I think 2028 is actually a sensible starting point. It gives both competitions time to negotiate the governance, broadcasting and financial arrangements properly.
But I would make the brother–sister club system and coordinated minimum salaries central to the agreement, not optional extras.

The NRL gets an international development network and access to the British market. Super League gets investment, stronger pathways and the opportunity to improve its financial position.

Most importantly, players and clubs on both sides have something tangible to gain.

We’ve spent decades watching rugby league operate as separate competitions on opposite sides of the world. There’s an opportunity to connect them properly without sacrificing what makes either competition unique.

Would you support a formal NRL–Super League sister-club system with linked player pathways and progressively aligned minimum salaries? Or would it ultimately favour the Australian clubs too heavily?

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This is the place to talk about everything other than footy!

Channel Seven reportedly paid around $12 million for the Australian broadcast rights to the 2026 Rugby League World Cup. That’s 53 matches across the men’s, women’s and wheelchair tournaments, or roughly $226,000 per match.

Looking at the opening television figures, it’s becoming a very interesting investment.

Australia v New Zealand (15 October)
National average audience: 1.733 million
National reach: 3.296 million
BVOD audience on 7plus: 594,000
Streaming represented 34.3% of the total average audience.

Tonga v England (17 October)
National average audience: 1.034 million
National reach: 2.383 million
BVOD audience: 337,000
Streaming represented 32.6% of the total average audience.

What’s particularly interesting is the digital audience.
During the 2026 NRL season, Nine reported a 58.4% increase in regular-season BVOD viewing compared with 2025. State of Origin II also set a then-record Australian BVOD audience of approximately 1.7 million on 9Now.
Now Seven is seeing that same appetite for streaming rugby league on 7plus.

For comparison, the 2026 AFL Grand Final averaged 4.52 million nationally, including approximately 1.42 million on 7plus — about 31% of its total audience.

That’s an enormous AFL audience, but the World Cup opener achieved a slightly higher proportion of digital viewers, despite being a considerably smaller event.
Our regular-season comparisons earlier this year also showed how strong NRL BVOD could be. On one Friday, the NRL recorded 157,000 streaming viewers against 82,000 for the AFL. On another Sunday, the figures were 104,000 against 28,000.

Those individual matches aren’t a complete season comparison, but they illustrate the opportunity.
Seven has spent years building its AFL coverage, yet it has acquired an international rugby league tournament for a reported $12 million and immediately attracted hundreds of thousands of streaming viewers to 7plus.

Of course, strong audiences don’t automatically make the rights profitable. Production costs, advertising revenue, sponsorship and the remaining tournament fixtures all matter.

But the early numbers suggest Seven may have secured a valuable property at a relatively modest price.
Could the biggest long-term benefit of this World Cup be demonstrating rugby league’s digital value to broadcasters beyond Nine and Fox?

And if Seven is getting these numbers for $12 million, what does that suggest about the future value of international rugby league?

RLWC Women scores

Samoa v Wales 76-0

Fiji v PNG 40-4

Australia v England 78-0

New Zealand v France 92-0

RLWC Men's scores

Tonga v Lebanon 36-0

Samoa v PNG 64-6

England v France 82-0

There's still 2 more games to be played between New Zealand v Cook Islands and Australia v Fiji

The points differential is only going to get worse.

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