Is the England v Italy game on TV on saturday?

No, it's not being televised.

Sky currently hold the rights to broadcast England games (apart from the RLWC) and they are not interested. Blackpool V Wigan in the Championship and Cardiff V Toulon in the Heineken Cup is more important to them.

Sky weren't interested in the RLWC so they certainly won't be interested in a RLWC warm-up fixture.

Not true. Sky put in a bid to broadcast the competition. The rights agency thought it could do better and went elsewhere, realised the offer Sky had made was actually pretty good and went back grovelling, naturally they were told where to go.

Thanks for confirmation that Sky weren't interested in the RLWC the last time they were offered the broadcasting rights. In fact, [url=http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/apr/10/bbc-deal-rugby-league-world-cupSky aren't interested in televising international RL for the next four years either, along with the RLWC in 2017[/url.

another genius decision by the organisers to take the easy option and the quick cash from IMG whilst relinquishing any say in where the games would be shown.....for all the talk of on-line media players, Rileys snooker halls and 2 month subscription deals, Premier Sports is an access TV set up and the fact remains that regardless of the SKY offer, it should have been accepted, because if you are a sports fans watching SKY between now and Nov 30th, I doubt you'd know there was a RLWC on.....and spots fans are the people we should be targeting (see ITV advert thread)!

Looks like Cook Islands v New Zealand is on Premier next Sunday Afternoon from 2:45pm.

Excellent news.

It's not listed on Premier Sports website schedule yet but it has been listed on the Sky TV guide next Sunday from 2.45 pm as a "Live RLWC2013 Challenge Match".

It's unfortunate Premier Sports cannot show England V Italy the day before, but like I said earlier, Sky still hold the broadcasting rights to England games until the end of this year and they choose not to exercise their broadcasting rights.

Would sky have shown every game like premier? No doubt they also wanted exclusive rights to the England games as well, leaving only highlights on the BBC.

I would say we have done well with 6 consecutive weekends of RL on free to air tv on the horizon.

It's not a bad deal if the BBC highlights packages are shown nationally and with regularity at a decent timeslot.

Sadly I doubt this will be the case and we'll probably end up with a weekly highlights package broadcast at 4AM in Yorkshire only.

Yes I would agree that there also needs to be a decent highlights package to go along with the BBC coverage.

IIRC the BBC and SKY shared the TV rights in 2008...."SOME" England games were on FTA.


It is great news and it is a comfort to know that the 6 games the BBC show will be the best attended too.....but SKY losing the RLWC and the one in 2017 does not bode well for their on-going relationship with the RFL.....but that's a different discussion altogether.

This does annoy me with the SL show. It's not as if there is something important or something that is being shown for the first time. It's usually a Graham Norton re-run!

it's part of the paid RFU/IRB conspiracy apparently

Sky didn’t want to share the rights with the BBC, the unfortunate fact is that when you strip England out of the comp, the WC isn’t all that attractive to a pay TV provider. Having FTA Coverage of the big games is more important than having the none-england games on Sky rather than Premier Sports.

We also have the guarantee of international RL on the BBC in 2014, 2016, and 2017 at least. So over the next 5 years we have FTA Broadcast of RL in 4 of them. That is brilliant, its an unbridled positive. Yet the same faces choose to see this as Sky playing down interest in International RL rather than the BBC increasing it.

On a postive note, at least the BBC have been giving the Super League Show an nationwide broadcast slot this year too, albeit in mid afternoon on a Tuesday on BBC 2, which is giving it slightly better coverage than just the late night regional showings on BBC1.

The SL Play-Off games even got a reasonable timeslot on a Sunday afternoon.

I doubt Sky were too interested in securing the rights to the RLWC. They already had the autumn Rugby Union international schedule with England RU games against Australia and All Blacks pencilled in for the Saturday afternoon slot, which now clash with England RLWC fixtures on the BBC of course. Sky also have the early Saturday evening slot filled with Premier League soccer so that rules out their usual 6pm-ish kick off times for RL internationals. When would England's RLWC games have been scheduled had Sky shown real interest and secured the broadcasting rights? Thursday evening kick offs at 8pm with no pre-match build up?


Agreed. International RL has gone backwards during Sky's polyfilla coverage since 1996. Much better to have 3 or 4 million watching on a major FTA TV during a prime Saturday afternoon slot as opposed to barely 200K watching on a Sky Sports channel at some weird hour to fill an off-peak gap in the Sky Sports schedules.


Further emphasising Sky's policy of withdrawal from rugby league coverage in recent years. That's international RL, the NRL and Championship RL they no longer broadcast.


Because that's exactly what has happened... duh!

It may surprise you to learn Sky have multiple sports channels. That allows them to show more than one event at the same time. But then you knew that
As for the build up, it depends what was previously agreed with the production company. But then you knew that as well.
Which perhaps poses the question of why you would pretend to be concerned about these ‘problems’ even though you know they don’t actually exist. Perhaps you could spend a year creating a spreadsheet about your fallacious arguments to highlight your faux concern?

Seems strange then that you are desperately attempting to use it as a negative argument.

That would be Sky’s withdrawal from Rugby League over the last few years that so far consists of screening more games as well as more secondary programming and more hours of RL as a total?

Except Sky did bid for the RLWC, its not that they weren’t interested in the RLWC, but that they weren’t interested in an RLWC without the major matches. So we sold the major matches for this World Cup, the next world cup, and 2 Four nations championships to the BBC. Something your yourself admit is a good thing. We have gone from having one bidder for the RLWC, to three bidders. One of them being FTA. This is a good thing that no amount of your agenda pushing could change to a negative.

was BT Sport in existence when the RLWC TV rights were sold?

Where you getting these figures from? Because as far as I know they're no where near correct. Even at prime time on a Saturday RL pulls around 1 mil or lower from what I've heard, which is why they don't mind moving it around the afternoon as it makes no difference to viewing figures, the same people (and only the same people) will watch it regardless of KO time.

I'm pretty sure BT Sport started bidding for rights last year, getting the Premiership Rugby about a year or so ago.

Sky showed them live, the BBC had highlights.

Why did Nigel Wood commission this joke?

Premier sports is a worthy investment if you like your rl.

Get it now and you can have every world cup game and cancel after 2 months. Get it for the year, tenner a month you get EVERY nrl game (3 live, the rest replayed) state of origin, anzact test, the works. You also get the championship games as well.

Sky sports used to show all that now all they do is the super league. They've really gone off the rl market in the last 5 years. Wonder how long before they decide they simply don't need super league?

I am one of the unfortunate ones who's TV provider is Virgin Media so I'm unable to get Premier Sports on the TV for the World Cup. I know I can probably get it for a tablet or PC but it's not the same to me. With that in mind and for any other poor VM customer then here is a bit of good news. The scheduling of the BBC games live.
BBC World Cup Schedule

Saturday, 26 October
England v Australia: 14:00-16:30, BBC One & HD
Wales v Italy: 16:30-19:00, BBC Two & HD

Sunday, 27 October
Rugby League World Cup highlights: 23:45-00:25, BBC One & HD

Saturday, 2 November
England v Ireland: 14:00-16:30, BBC One & HD

Sunday, 3 November
Rugby League World Cup highlights: BBC One & HD

Saturday, 9 November
England v Fiji: 14:00-16:30, BBC One & HD

Sunday, 10 November
Rugby League World Cup highlights: BBC One & HD

Monday, 11 November
Rugby League World Cup highlights: BBC Two & HD

Tuesday, 12 November
Rugby League World Cup highlights: BBC Two & HD

Saturday, 16 or Sunday, 17 November
Rugby League World Cup quarter-final: BBC Two & HD

Sunday, 17 November
Rugby League World Cup highlights: BBC Two & HD

Saturday, 23 November
Rugby League World Cup semi-final: BBC One & HD

Sunday, 24 November
Rugby League World Cup highlights: BBC Two & HD

Saturday, 30 November
Rugby League World Cup final: BBC One & HD, 1345-1630

Sunday, 1 December
Rugby League World Cup final highlights: BBC Two & HD


Even assuming the highlights programmes may be late night, I'd say it's very good free to air coverage.

Increased coverage on the news, radio and BBC Sport website is a huge boost too. Saturday afternoon on BBC One as the winter rolls in and there's not a lot to do is a brilliant slot.