A mixture of luck, competition and old fashioned good management. On his deathbed, Kerry Packer put in a cheeky bid for the rights which pushed Channels 7 and 10 to raise theirs to a ridiculous, unsustainable level. We're told Kerry did it to off his old rivals.

You also can't get past the fact that their sport is much better run than Rugby league is in this country and we have too close a relationship to Foxtel, Channel Nine and News Ltd. and appear to kow tow to them.

It also doesn't help that a lot of TV people seem to ignore regional NSW and Qld ratings (which add hundreds of thousands of viewers to RL's column and are bigger than Perth and Adelaide combined) in favour of the 5 capital city ratings (which oddly also excludes Canberra, another RL area).

I think the future's brighter, though, with plans to split up the rep games and the NRL - so hopefully we can start to get what we deserve.

I'm not a massive fan of Origin, but how can anyone say that horse racing is a good spectacle?

Australians.

It's known as the race that stops a nation.

Its not it just gives the aussies a chance to participate in their number one activity! Betting, they bloody love it over here, everything has a bookies proce attached to it

Horse racing is not considered as a human sport to me , its an animal sport, the horse trains, runs, gets whipped by a jockey who sits back and enjoys the ride.No I'm Eagle by birth get it right.

Horse racing is cruelty to animals IMO, If you whipped your dog or kicked your dog you would get a heavy fine ,but in this case they get away with it.

and one day it actually might make us some money! As for TV companaies falling overthemselves, hmmmm, you must have missed the last TV deal we got!

ps has it sold out in Sydney yet?