Super League war

The Super League war was the corporate dispute that was fought in and out of court during the mid-1990s between the Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation-backed Super League (Australia) and the Kerry Packer and Optus Vision-backed Australian Rugby League organisations over broadcasting rights for, and ultimately control of the top-level professional rugby league football competition of Australasia. After much court action from the already-existing ARL to prevent it from happening, Super League ran one premiership season parallel to the ARL's in 1997 after signing enough clubs disenchanted with the traditional administration to do so. At the conclusion of that season a peace deal was reached and both Leagues united to form the National Rugby League of today.

Prior to News Corporation's Super League proposal, the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) and Australian Rugby League (ARL) had planned to rationalise the number of Sydney teams. In July 1986 the Daily Telegraph reported:

Following the expansion of the competition throughout the 1980s and '90s many clubs were not financially viable in the long term. The NSWRL solution was to eject them from the competition when they no longer met prescribed criteria. Although Newtown were ejected from the competition at the end of the 1983 season, attempts to remove Western Suburbs were unsuccessful after court action. Thereafter the NSWRL introduced an invitation-based system whereby it could fail to invite a club, thus excluding it. This left clubs without the security of continued participation in the premiership.

On 9 April 1992 A blueprint for the expansion of Rugby League was tabled by the Premiership Policy Committee of the NSWRL, followed in August by an Organisation Review, by Dr G. Bradley, which was distributed to the premiership clubs. The Bradley Report, as it became known, was central to the ARL replacing the NSWRL as the governing body of the premiership. The report concluded that:

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