NRL TV rights deal cracks the $1 billion mark

Australian Rugby League Commission chairman John Grant has announced that the NRL has entered a five-year deal with Channel Nine and Fox Sports worth $1.025 billion.

Seven West's boss says he couldn't make a profit on showing NRL at the price paid by rival networks.

Channel 9 CEO David Gyngell says the deal will see no change to the amount of live games on Free to air television.

But will see an increase in the amount Fox Sports will broadcast, including 13 live Sunday night games.

Channel 10 and Channel Seven felt that they had tabled better deals for the future of the game, but Nine having held the rights since 1992 was clearly seen as a safer option.

It's a hefty sum of money in an aggressive and overcrowded market place.

The AFL is paid 1.25 billion for its tv rights, over a season's games that's about 1,100 dollars a minute.

However compared with the global market, it's small change.

The English Premier League's one and half Billion dollar deal with BSKYB costs a whopping $33,000 a minute.

But that's dwarfed by the deal in the US for NFL rights which is worth in excess of 3 billion a year, that's costing broadcasters almost $160,000 a minute.