THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — A pop music icon having a transformative effect on a sport, catapulting its appeal to a new, younger and decidedly more female audience.
Sound familiar?
The Taylor Swift-meets-football phenomenon was the biggest narrative of the 2023 NFL season, bringing a whirlwind of drama, a mountain of headlines, and, ultimately, a ring — Super Bowl, not engagement (for now).
It was exciting partly because it felt so different than the usual sports story. However, the idea of a team enjoying a pop-infused popularity boost wasn’t completely unprecedented, as fans of Australia’s NRL rugby league competition can attest.
Back in the late 1980s, rugby league was largely seen in Australia as something working-class males in the Sydney area went to watch on weekends.
It didn’t have great national relevance, with different parts of the country preferring other sports, such as Australian Rules football, and the athletes were neither marketed nor regarded as entertainers.
Enter American pop royalty Tina Turner, recruited by the league for a pair of advertising campaigns to promote the competition (then known as the NSWRL) in a way designed to capture a fresh fan demographic and highlight its athletes as celebrities.
“That was the moment,” Brisbane Broncos head coach Kevin Walters told me this week. “It changed everything.”
Walters, currently in the United States ahead of his team’s involvement in this weekend’s pair of official NRL games at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas (at 9:30 p.m. ET and 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturday), remembers his time as a Broncos player, helping the team win the 1993 Grand Final.
Turner, then an international superstar who had performed as the lead act in the pre-game show, joined the squad for photographs and celebrations on the field once they emerged victorious.
The Turner effect officially began in 1989. Recognizing the need to transform the sport’s rough-around-the-edges image, league chairman John Quayle signed off on acquiring the rights to Turner’s 1985 hit “What You Get Is What You See” for a commercial.
The song was paired alongside fast-paced, hard-hitting action sequences and deliberately hammed-up images of players drenched in sweat and flexing their muscles, usually with their shirts mysteriously missing.
“I had the pleasure of working with her as one of the chosen players for the commercial,” retired star Wayne Pearce, now Australian rugby league commissioner, told me. “There was a scene on a beach where I wore a pair of pink (speedos) and a nightclub scene in a dinner suit and they got me to dance with her.
“I was a bit nervous; she was a big star, and she had to tell me to ‘chill out, just let it flow.’ But she was incredible. The thing simply wouldn’t have worked if she hadn’t entered into it in the right spirit. She was genuine, she got what we were trying to do and she was committed to it.
“It is interesting for us in Australia to watch what has happened with the NFL and Taylor Swift. It is a little different because Tina’s involvement was planned and orchestrated — and she wasn’t dating any of the players.
“But what it did for our game was monumental. It put us on another level. Before that, we were seen as being a bit too rugged, a man-orientated game. After that, TV ratings and crowd figures went up, there was a younger audience and a lot more women.”
The NRL has strengthened ever since. This weekend’s games, the first two official matchups of the new regular season, are part of efforts aimed at expanding the league’s popularity, much like how the NFL launched its International Series 17 years ago.
The connection with Turner came as part of a fortunate coincidence. Quayle’s assistant in the late-’80s happened to be acquainted with Roger Davies, a legendary music industry executive who subsequently led acts such as Pink and who was then Turner’s manager.
The first part of the Turner campaign was successful enough to be followed a year later by one that created even more waves and won international marketing awards for its creativity and success.
In 1990, Davies identified a song titled “The Best” from Turner’s upcoming “Foreign Affair” album, as being ideal for a sports campaign and offered it to rugby league chiefs. The tune, with its “simply the best” chorus lyric, became a huge hit in Australia and furthered the game’s mainstream appeal.
A capacity crowd belting out the words while Turner performed ahead of the 1993 final remains an iconic moment in rugby league history. If there was any doubt as to how much Turner’s impact had on the sport, a poignant reminder came after the singer’s death in May.
Last year’s final saw a tribute performance from cast members of “Tina”, a popular stage musical that tells the story of the singer’s life and career.
“It was a golden era for rugby league and part of that is through Tina Turner,” NRL CEO Andrew Abdo said. “She played a unique role in probably the most iconic marketing campaign in our history. It was inspirational, and it got people thinking about rugby league differently.”
On Saturday, the Broncos will take on Sydney Roosters and the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles will battle the South Sydney Rabbitohs in Vegas, the first installment in a five-year plan to bring NRL games to the U.S.
The American adventure is seen as a potentially transcendent step for the game and a bold one. If it enjoys anywhere near as much success as the Turner-led effort from more than three decades ago, it will go down as a big win.
