Taking on Nine: Wests Tiger's Aaron Woods, Folx Sports commentator Warren Smith and Manly's Daly Cherry-Evans at Monday's launch. Delany said this before a room loaded with icons from other sports, from Cathy Freeman to Buddy Franklin to David Parkin to Michael Cheika to Israel Folau to Mark Skaife to John Aloisi … It was lost on nobody, though, what the "preferred" code was. Fox Sports' turbo-charged coverage might be a game-changer for rugby league, but there's no dispute it should also be a game-changer for long-time free-to-air broadcaster Channel Nine. The message was rammed down our throats at Monday morning's function about what Fox Sports' subscribers could expect: all eight matches live, in high definition, ad free; hours of pre-match and post-match analysis, with Matty Johns spearheading Friday night coverage and Kangaroos coach Mal Meninga joining the panel; a beefed up NRL 360, featuring Origin coaches Laurie Daley and Kevin Walters; more magazine shows, more footy talk, more, more, more.

If you're a league obsessive, you just flick to channel 501 on your Foxtel on Thursday night and leave it there until late Monday or you receive divorce papers. The interesting part of all this, of course, is what it means for Nine. Surely, it means it will have to lift its game – or at least revolutionise its coverage. "And I've told Joey that," laughed Johns, referring to his brother and Nine expert Andrew Johns. "Don't worry about the ratings. The only ratings that matter is who's watching in one street in Cessnock." He was talking about the Hunter Valley residence of his parents, Gary and Gayle. This is a watershed season for NRL coverage, which surprises given how much uncertainty there was last year when former chief executive Dave Smith decided to engage in a staring contest with Rupert Murdoch.

Smith, you'll recall, stunned all of us when he hatched a $925 million free-to-air deal from 2018 with then Nine boss David Gyngell. It was announced on the morning Murdoch's private jet touched down in Sydney. Ouch. Seasoned television observers wondered about the size of Smith's brain, even if there was no doubt about the size of his … er, you get the picture. In the heady days and weeks that followed, there was talk that News Corp was furious with Delany for allowing Fox Sports to be boxed into a corner. Without high-rating rugby league coverage, what was the point of Fox Sports? Without live sport to broadcast, what was the point of Foxtel?

Then Rupert flashed the black Amex and did a record deal with the AFL, which he then called "the premium code". Scary times for the alleged greatest game of all. It all got sorted in the end. Smith left the NRL with a big fat wad of cash in his back pocket. Gyngell left Nine with a far bigger wad, and according to everyone who sees him now, he looks 10 years younger. And Fox Sports ended up securing a "seven-year deal", paying $1 billion for five years from 2018 and an additional $20 million a year to Nine for the next two years to simulcast all eight matches. It will have a designated league channel from next year, just as it does with AFL. On top of that, Delany pulled off the greatest off-season signing of them all. After years of niggling, he lured Nine sports supremo Steve Crawley to Fox Sports to head up its coverage of all live sport.

In 14 years, Crawley took Nine's live coverage – especially in league and cricket – to a level you'd only find in the US. I recall conversations with him years ago about "total coverage". In other words, taking the viewer inside the dressing room, or out onto the field of play, like ESPN does in the US. Crawley brought it here. He starts at Fox Sports in May. These machinations behind the scenes provide the league viewer with something they have never really had before: choice. Stick with what you know on Nine, or flick over to the new-look coverage on Fox Sports? Personally, I'd rather wear an old gym shirt to bed than expensive Peter Alexander pyjamas.

I'd rather listen to Ray Warren and Phil Gould call footy over most Fox Sports callers any day of the week. (I'll declare the conflict of interest: I was Rabs' ghost writer for his autobiography, and Gus is a long-time Fairfax Media colleague). It's a personal preference. But others prefer Warren Smith and Greg Alexander. On that score, how often will Fox Sports schedule Andrew Voss to call the same Friday night game as Ray Hadley, who Voss sued for defamation over a furore about Rabs' statue? For the first time, Nine will broadcast every match in high definition. But its disadvantage is that it must decide in advance which three matches it will broadcast per round for the first 20 rounds. In an increasingly unpredictable competition, it means Nine is locked into matches that could be completely redundant come July.

You could be watching a Roosters team limp to the end of the season every week on Nine as the Dragons make a fabled run from last to the minor premiership on Fox Sports. Something like that. Either way, the rugby league viewer who has so often been treated as an afterthought over the years suddenly has significant choice again. "It's a fresh of breath air [sic]," Manly star Daly Cherry-Evans told the room when asked about the major changes at his club. He could've been speaking about coverage of rugby league, the greatest/preferred game of all.