Fuelled by caffeine and pizza, rugby league officials negotiated through the night with the managing director of Channel Nine, Jeff Browne, and the chief executive of Fox Sports, Patrick Delany, to finalise a $A1.025 billion ($NZ1.3 billion) television rights deal that almost didn't happen.

In fact, some of those involved in the negotiations at the ARL Commission's headquarters didn't even have time to go home and shower before the deal was announced yesterday morning.

However, the Sydney Morning Herald understands that at one stage in the final negotiations - which began on Friday when Channel Seven's proprietor, Kerry Stokes, and Ten chairman Lachlan Murdoch, joined Browne, Delany and other TV executives to present bids on behalf of their networks - the commission was poised to break ties with Nine and Fox Sports, the game's existing broadcasters.

The commission's negotiating team of chairman John Grant and commissioners Ian Elliot, Gary Pemberton and Jeremy Sutcliffe were unhappy with the pay TV component of the joint Nine-Fox bid and were prepared to award the free-to-air rights to Seven or Ten, which would have broadcast four matches a week. If necessary, the commission would have done its own on-demand deal to broadcast the remaining matches on the internet.

Finally, after the negotiating committee met seven times in four days, it was decided to accept a revised offer from Nine and Fox Sports and a meeting of all eight commissioners on Monday night unanimously accepted their recommendation. Browne and Delany were then called in and spent the night with Grant, the commission's interim chief executive, Shane Mattiske, a former AFL commissioner, Graeme Samuels, and two other consultants.

''Some of us didn't go home,'' Mr Mattiske said. ''I left at 5am, managed to get 90 minutes' sleep, dropped my kids at school and then got back here again.

''There were about a dozen people in the room all through the night so we called up pizzas, rolled in a coffee machine and we just pushed on. There was a stage where we had contracted all the key contractual terms and the lawyers needed to do some drafting. So that was when Jeff, Patrick, myself and a couple of other people snuck out for a while.

''We all came back about 7.30am and it was finalised shortly after. I think pen was put to paper just after 9.30am.''

While the rival bids from Seven and Ten were believed to be comparable to Nine's offer, the fact that Nine was prepared to pay $A80 million in advance was a significant factor in the decision to accept the joint bid with Fox Sports, which will also contribute $A10 million in advance payments.

Significantly, Nine, Fox Sports and News Ltd have agreed to forgo the first and last rights provisions on future deals, which officials believe will ensure an even better deal when the rights are renewed in five years.

News had negotiated the provision until 2027 as a condition of its handing control of the game to an independent commission in February.

''That is all really, really important in terms of the value the game takes from the deal,'' Mr Mattiske said.

- Sydney Morning Herald