I only have Sky Sports for RL... I only have Sky Movies as it's only a few quid on top of the Sports... RL goes and it's safe to say that Sports and Movies will go from my subs.

I think you're underestimating RL's value ot Sky. I would imagine we're certainly one of their more profitable ventures in terms of viewing figures (i.e. advertising) and sole purpose subscriptions.

I think there's something in this. Sports news coverage of RL on TV is still poor so without a Sky subscription most fans would see nowt. Personally, when renewing I always ask Sky when they will offer a sports package MINUS premier league wendyball as I never watch this garbage but calculate that more than half my subscription money goes to 'subsidise' the production of what seems like 365 24/7 drivel.

Ours would go for definate

There was a report a couple of years back that SKY had looked into splitting the sports channels so that one was for soccer, one for (both codes of) rugby/cricket and the other two for general sports coverage and magazines. Their research supposedly suggested that the football channel would lose money, such is the exhorbitant price they pay for that sport. They need fans of other sports subscribing to the total sports package in order to make up the difference.

Figures from BARB show that when RL has no competition for live sport i.e. it is shown on Sky Sport 1 (which is where the good income from advertising lines comes from, Sky sell space based on the channel and timeslot) it gets relatively good figures. Though when it does have competition the figures drop dramatically which would indicate few sunscribe purely for RL in itself and BARBs own data shows viewing patterns for a single sport are rare outside of football.

Having said that using BARB figures as the sole means of stating how important RL is to sky is rather dubious given the method BARB use.