Much more to the Melbourne Storm

There are three golden rules when you run a national sporting association raking in a billion dollars a year from advertisers and sponsors. First, don't create a controversy that makes advertisers and sponsors uncomfortable. Second, don't create a controversy that makes advertisers and sponsors uncomfortable. And thirdly, but equally as important, there is always: don't create a controversy that makes advertisers and sponsors uncomfortable.

The golden rules were breached by National Rugby League club Melbourne Storm on Anzac Day when the Storm's board of directors had the brain fart of the decade, deciding at the 11th hour to cancel a three-minute welcome to country by a Wurundjeri elder. Hours earlier, down the road at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance, white nationalists had interrupted the dawn service by booing and heckling during the welcome to country. 

Presumably the Storm board, egged on by the usual suspects on Sky News, felt that welcome to country ceremonies were too woke and offended many red-blooded Aussies.

The controversy that erupted over its cancellation would have caused a shitstorm inside rugby league headquarters in Sydney, where NSW sporting plenipotentiary Peter V'Landys has been promising a new broadcast rights deal that will make the AFL look like a bunch of amateurs.

For V'Landys to pull off a record-breaking TV rights deal, the NRL needs to convince bidding broadcasters and streamers that advertisers will queue up to pay 30 to 40 per cent more than they already do. But advertisers won't pay that uplift to appear alongside a product tainted by extremist politics that enrage half of their paying customers.