[urlhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p064gq87[/url

Personally, I don't agree with this train of thought.

Sky need to continue to deliver content and even though Premier TV seem to have plans with Union by taking up their PRO 14 Competition which may put them out of the running, BT will definitely be in the mix......as will other on-line providers.

I'd like any TV deal to include either an assurance that Championship games will be shown weekly or permission for the Championship to stream their own broadcasts.

In the interview there's a claim that the BBC may show interest....again I'd put a condition in that the SL show would be broadcast Sunday Evening NATIONALLY, or other FTA channels need to be approached.

We have possibly 150,000 avid RL fans who tune in to watch games......and many would tune in to watch more games if they were shown, so we should also look at a platform like the NRL one....

i agree that we need the BBC to be contractually agreed to show the SL show nationally in a good timeslot the current setup is from the dark ages.

as for the main rights id like to see two packages set up. One for two games a week as a 'gold' tier and then a second package of 1 game a week sold to someone else (ideally free to air) as a 'Silver' tier. RU have got a lot more viewers with their Channel5 games this way.

I've said on previous threads, but Sky know exactly what RL is worth to the business. They know how many people watch the sport, they know what advertising slots are worth, and they'll have a good idea of how many subscriptions depend on RL content. They're not going to offer us more money just because we want them to. The same goes for BT, the BBC, Premier, Amazon or anyone else who may be interested.

The sport needs to look at what it is offering broadcasters and commercial partners, and I really do think that in preparation for 2021, the sport needs to work hard on this.

We're one of the few sports in this country that dillutes its own TV audience. On Friday night, whilst Sky are televising Leeds vs Warrington, there are two other Super League fixtures - one at Wigan and one at Huddersfield. On some weeks, we have almost a full fixture list taking place during one of our two TV slots.

We miss opportunities for commercial partnerships because we don't sell on-pitch branding. That's a missed opportunity that makes us less attractive to sponsors and/or broadcasters.

And the product that we present needs to improve. Someone channel flicking and finding Widnes v Salford in front of 4k-ish people is just going to keep prodding the remote. We need to be offering broadcasters more events that generate that interest, and on on-field package that grabs the attention as soon as the viewer hits that remote. Is that more 'showpieces' like Magic Weekend or games at major football grounds? Is it more rep games? Is it a 7s / 9s comp to showcase our skill factor? Whatever it is, I don't think what we currently offer is working and I don't think Championship games are the answer either.

And at the risk of stirring up another debate entirely, we need to increase our appeal amongst new markets and demographics. There is nowhere in traditional RL land where [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43729508average weekly wages[/url are higher than the national average (Leeds is the closest at £6 a week under the average). That might not sound massively relevant, but the spending power of the audience its something that potential sponsors pay attention to when they make their decisions on where to promote their product - and that feeds into the value of broadcast rights.

Someone mentioned splitting the rights into packages. That sounds like a good idea, but there is a risk that you dilute the product too much. We have one big showpiece when it comes to Super League and if I were Sky or BT, exclusivity of the Grand Final would be a red line if I were looking at investing in Super League.

My dream setup would be:

Premium Games major platform 2/week
1 other game/week on Free To Air (FTA)

Online Subscription Service £150/season upfront or £15/month
All games shown live and on-demand (including a timeline to skip to tries and big hits etc), pre/post match analysis, past seasons games, and highlights.

Weekly program to include highlights of games played that week on FTA

Weekly program of just tries and big hits on FTA/Major Platform

online subscription would mean investment in better/more TV cameras at all games, but I think the investment would be worth it for the league for the subscription revenue and also better social media clips for SL and the clubs. It could also mean video refs at all games a lot of grounds have permanent screens anyway.

Where are all the subscribers willing to fork out £150 going to come from? I've watched the game for 40 years+, including a ST for most of those, but I wouldn't contemplate spending an extra £150 on top of what I already pay to watch sport on TV. Having cameras at every SL game would cost the TV company a fortune, and subscription numbers would need to be enormous to make it a viable proposition.

The Sky deal is actually pretty generous, and we may get stung when it comes round for renewal. That said, if Sky have the money to spend, they may take the view that a reduced deal would impact the game to an extent that it would kill the game at a full-time level without their contribution.

That said, it would be good to have a FTA deal that allowed for some SL and Championship games to be aired live, as well as a proper highlights show at a reasonable time. If the deal was brokered correctly, then it may well be in Sky's interest to support this, as FTA coverage might just encourage a few more folk to watch the subscription games on SKy Sports?

Alternatively Sky need to realise that a lot of revenue could be raised through PPV super league games. Because at the end of the day £30/month + is a lot to pay for Sky Sports if you only intend to watch Rugby League. Whereas £3.5-£5 is reasonable to pay if you can't get to the match or want to watch a big game that doesn't include your team!

You have NowTV which allows you to subscribe to Sky Sports for something like £7 a day, but you're not going to get them offering PPV games over their established platform. Sky's business model relies on the 'bundling up' of services. You can't just subscribe to Sky Sports - you have to take on a whole additional channel package to access the sports content.

I paid for watchnrl and it's great value. All 8 games on a weekend and RL related shows available on demand. Not sure I'd be willing to watch all 6 SL games though. Also can't imagine The Late Show with Phil Clarke (with Barry and Tez) instead of Matty Johns with Fletch and Hindy!

Well Bradford's streaming of home and away games for free hasn't hurt their crowds. In fact, there's been talk from some lapsed fans on social media than what they've seen shown on the stream has encouraged them to head back to Odsal.

And old Mick's claiming viewing figures of over 150,000

I don't do SKY, never have, I've paid for my own clubs matches on subscription but gave it up as the quality was poor and the website absolute garbage.
However I would pay £150 for a rugby league package that I could access anywhere.

To suggest the SKY package is generous fails to grasp how much it aids SKY to get revenue from punters they would simply not get at all, not to mention that it's peanuts compared to other sports with less numbers. RL for SKY offers a fantastic deal for them, not the other way around.


As for promoting the sport to areas with a higher hrade deomgraphic, well RFL weren't really committed to that, London they did next to feck all to support it and basically wandered off from the South as a whole despite the fact international games get a lot of tickets sold from the Southern regions.
I was reading about how Barry Hearn has massively expanded snooker over the last few years and the money now for the WC is £2M just for that one tournament the winner this year gets £425k, it's going up to £500k according to Hearn by 2020.

He's managed to tap into other markets and increased the popularity of the sport and has tournaments on many different platforms/channels. The money for the WC had dropped 60% from early 2000s and on a downward trend, it's gone fro a low of £890k total to the £2M in 10 years. Maybe getting the son on board isn't such a bad idea!

RL is worth more than it's costing SKY but the RFL have short changed it and even devalued it far too often including the headline SL sponsor, I don;t expect a better deal and RFL will no doubt simply go with what they think is the safe.easy option so they don't have to actually do anything. It's that laziness/ineptitude that has seen the game go backwards

In a nutshell...THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Unfortunately for us, the problem now is that we've been overtaken by Union in terms of viewers and darts and WWE pull in comparable viewing figures, so next time around we will need to negotiate harder and not just roll over........regardless of if the money is less or more, we need to demand more games, championship games, more FTA coverage and nationally at sensible times......and the clubs, not just the RFL/SL Board need to do more to get punters back through the gates.......
......alas, it'll be the top 12 dictating what's what and so long as they ring fence their 2 mill a year each they won't care about the rest.....

Actually, maybe not [url=http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/sport/sportbulls/16206862.Chalmers_column__Lack_of_support_for_Super_League_power_switch_an_important_message/Lack of support for SL[/url

I reckon what they want they will do......and until toronto arrive with a big fat cheque for gazzillions in TV cash I'd treat them the same way we did crusaders/London/PSG.......still tickets available on-line for this weeks game in a 3k stadium trying to pack in 7k "live action starved fans".................

Haven't the last few TV deals been negotiated on behalf of the RFL by IMG? These guys aren't idiots by any stretch of the imagination.

In any case, I think it's wrong to assume that our TV deal is a result of the RFL "not negotiating hard enough" and I think that if we're going into negotiations for the new deal offering the same as what we have now, it's not going to end well. Sky know exactly what we bring to them in terms of monetary value, and the onus is on the sport to maximise that value.

Why would Sky pay more when the top talent is playing in another competition? Why would Sky pay more when we seem to be the only sport that seems to willingly dilute our own TV audience every Friday? Why would Sky pay more in a climate where new advertising technologies means that the advertising slots around RL content are going to become less valuable against other sports?

RL fans seem to like lazy answers and like "reserve teams" and "Eddie Hearn", the "The RFL doesn't negotiate hard enough with Sky" is another one. Broadcasters and sponsors expect more - and the sport needs to offer it.

Excellent point.

Premier League matches while the majority kick off at 15:00 they have ONE at 12:30, ONE at 17:30, then sometimes TWO at 13:30 on the Sunday and ONE at 16:00, then ONE on Monday night.

Almost all the televised games are at a time when no other games are being played! Other than the very few times a season there are midweek league fixtures.

Even the people who go to the 15:00 games get to watch the 12:30 and 17:30 ones in the pub before and after.

For the two weeks after Magic Weekend, we have three games going head-to-head with what is arguably our 'prime' TV slot:

FRI 25 MAY:
Warrington v Hull 19:45 SKY
Widnes v Wakefield 20:00
Salford v Huddersfield 20:00
Hull KR v Wigan 20:00

FRI 8 JUN
Warrington v Castleford 19:45 SKY
Leeds v Huddersfield 19:45
Hull FC v Salford 19:45
St Helens v Hull KR 20:00

It's absolute lunacy.

When you see it on paper it's absolute madness

Agree its crazy. Also how hard is it to standardise the kickoff times as well? When you check latest scores you have to remind yourself to check how long each game has been going.

One reason given for wanting to play Fridays is to maintain a weeks rest before playing the bigger teams (who generally play fridays) surely if SL bans games that are on at the same time as TV games, then teams will adjust to playing Saturdays and Sundays.

The other reason is corporates prefer Friday nights but im not even sure that is such a major factor in the post economic crash era. Hull staged last weeks game on a Saturday night instead of Friday night and a combination of good marketing, good weather and a bank holiday gave the highest crowd of the season.

You can easily preserve a decent rest period and 'block out' TV nights from the rest of the fixture list. A Sun-Thurs turnaround might be tough on teams, but you can compensate this in the following week. In an ideal world, we'd also have fewer fixtures, so you can mitigate the impact on player welfare by reducing the total number of games.

The "its easier to sell corporates" is a long-standing reasoning and I can believe it, but I don't think the benefits of that outweigh the potential devaluation of the broadcast contract by diluting our TV audience.

The other factor that comes into play is ground sharing arrangements. We all know that certain clubs (looking at you Wigan) are a pain in the when it comes to their ground arrangements, but should we be allowing clubs that have negotiated and entered into inflexible arrangements with their landlord to devalue the TV deal for the rest of the sport? I would argue not.

On the TV deal, I'd love to see us strike a deal where at least 1 game per week is on terrestrial free to air.
Sure it would impact on the total TV deal earnings, but longer term, that free to air national coverage could have a huge impact on our ability to secure top end sponsorships at whole of game, individual club level and player personal sponsorship.
Imagine if there was a game live on BBC every Sunday afternoon for instance - what other sport is ever on terrestrial tv? Hardly any nowadays - I could see it really taking off.
Also agree with the point on playing all our games when there is a match on TV, it's madness.

I know people wanna see some live coverage on FTA TV but we can't just give games away. It's up to FTA networks to put up the money and try and negotiate with sky to get a deal.

Giving away sports right cheaply is not the answer.

Are there any details of the BT/C5 deal with the Aviva? I have read that the 4 year deal to show 5 games a year is only worth £1,000,000? Surely that is very cheap? I now read that Chanel 4 will show live European Cup Rugby from next year......so yet again, we go from being the only domestic Rugby Comp on FTA in terms of the Challenge Cup, to probably having fewer games than Union next year.
I can't see BT saying to themselves, "let's give some stuff away cheap" rather I can see the IRB/RFU saying "as part of the rights deal, you will get us on Terrestrial FTA channels too........
........it works for many products to give stuff away and once it becomes popular you can charge for it, but we've already sold our game in its entirety to SKY!

Surely some free to air is needed to try and attract more interest? You only have to see the reactions after some of the BBC's sadly rare coverage to see that there are many who are surprised at the quality of the sport!