R360 appears to be many things. A predator, a disrupter, a sporting corporate raider. And possibly a liberator and agent of change.
Money talks and players around the world are listening.
This week, Australian media reported that a high-profile Rugby League player, Zac Lomax, was close to signing with R360 for an estimated €1.7 million. Several other world-class league players are also rumoured to have been offered staggering sums to join the new organisation.
The tactics of R360 are straight out of the playbook written by the late Australian media magnate Kerry Packer. The majority of rugby supporters were not born when Packer, the owner of TV station Channel Nine, created World Series Cricket (WSC). WSC was such a runaway success that it completely rewired the status quo in the cricket world of the 1970s.
In the year before the launch of WSC, Packer’s representatives had contracted the best players in the world by offering them massive amounts of money.
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