Are you serious? I'm not surprised you dont know of any other broadcasters that have ever shown an interest in Super League, because as far as I am aware they havent been given the opportunity to. How many of us knew the RFL were renegotiating tv deals with Sky for such a length of time? There should have been a concise tendering process undertaken, with enough time for all relevant parties (including club chairmain) to evaluate submissions and vote on which was most suitable to move the game forward.

Instead the chairman get a call the day before, asking for them to attend a meeting and vote on something they know very little about.

It may well be a phenomenal deal and had the RFL undertaken a proper tendering process, the results may well have been the same but the point is we will never know.

He has indeed, what did he win that Mcnamara hasn't ?

I've just listened to some of his press conference. It's a pity there aren't at least half a dozen Marwan Koukash's operating within the sport. One is definitely not enough.

You can't tender something that's not up for tender. You can renegotiate and extend. So, to be sure going to tender is the right thing to do, you have to be sure of 2 things:

1. The major competitor, who is driving the price up in the current renogotiation is still going to be present and active in 3 years.

2. The competitors is definitely going to be willing to outbid the present offer on the table.


Can you say with certainty either would be true? I couldn't. Considering they paid 152m for union, and a lot has been made about viewing figures vs advertising category's there are question marks bt would of gone higher than they did for union, which the sky deal beats (ish). And that's assuming that the harsh realitys of competing in the sports broadcast market doesn't kick in. Bt sport looks very attractive currently, but what happens to viewing figures when they start charging subscriptions? (Which they will do)

What's to stop the rfl running down the clock to tender, but bt sport to slow down purchasing, and then sky to hold us over a barrel and only sign the deal late for less money like they did in the early 00's?

Just as an aside, do or are any other Super League clubs having an official 2014 media launch? It's a first for a Salford and the whole event is being heralded by the media moguls on social networking. Apart from the aforementioned press conference, the team also took part in a public training session underneath the big screens on the Media City piazza.

No doubt the press will have a field day with this and we'll see many column inches filled with talk of Marwan Koukash, Salford Red Devils, Super League and the RFL tomorrow.

I'm fairly certain he was British coach for our last two wins over Australia. Something we can only dream of at present.

I understand it was a renegotiation and in order to tender (without knowing the details of the contract with Sky) I imagine the RFL would have needed to wait until they were in the final 18-12 months of their contract. As I said, the deal may be a phenominal one but we wont know because we appear to have taken the first offer Sky have tabled and ran with it. On the flip side from your comments, if BT Sports grow from strength to strength and offered competition to Sky during a tendering process who is to say the deal couldnt have been substancially more?

Hull had their media launch on-board a P&O Ferry for years when they sponsored us, but don't think we've done anything this year, apart from a kit launch back in October/November in Hull City Centre. Good to see Salford making use of the BBC being on their door step though.

What's a club media launch?

What trophies were they in the final of?

It's all based on IF's . So he's definately caught the RL bug.

Seriously people were complaining that the RFL had not announced a league sponsor for a couple of weeks, now they are complaining that a TV deal has been done too early.

The other option is wait 3 years only to find BT value RL at about £100million.
SKY outbid them and offer £120 million.

How much over the £200+million does koukash or anyone else think RL could get??? Seriously.

That's £40million a year
with current viewers averaging 150,000 for RL. and assuming every single one of those viewers gets SKY SPORT purely for RL (which they don't).

SKY could be running SL as a loss leader. Now given BT sports has far fewer viewers, how much more of a loss leader would they need to put RL at to just bid the same as SKY.

This takes nothing like the running costs into account for putting on the broadcasts. SKY are there to make money not run a charity. I think BT will be re thinking Rugby Unions deal too and I doubt it will be up given the number of viewers they have on board.

This is the problem though isn't it, we don't know how much negotiation has gone on, it may of been the first offer that came out of the blue, it may of been months worth of negotiation by the rfl. I doubt even the clubs know how many rounds of negotiation the rfl went through to get this offer. It could be 1 it could be 100. I remember a story being published in November time where the rfl talked about how they were going to restate negotiations with sky now and get a fairer deal. We all took it with a pinch of salt at the time. It may well of been well underway then, and this is months worth of back and forth.

As for bt sport going from strength to strength, it may well do, and become a serious competitor. But how long is enough to know they will be a long term consistent partner? 5 years? 10 years? I'd understand the argument far more at the end of this contract in 8 years time, but right now, they're as risky as a new company and it will take more than 3 years to see how serious they are!

Get real. A massive business like BT Sport will have been in contact with the RFL if they were serious about screening the sport and would have dangled them what they considered to be an appropriately-sized carrot. Either there was no deal or it promised to be an inferior one.

totally agree about the women bit!

more doctors in RL please

And you have any credibility with te above post? I would take Noble everyday of the week over McNamara.
McNamara won ONCE in 7 attempts against OZ/NZ. Now he's an assistant coach where he isn't going to get the opportunity to watch the form of English players. He's spot on with te McNamara issue.

I disagree in the SKY contract. We've got a massive increased deal, only because BT are bidding huge sums NOW. They need to add sports to their portfolio. I'm 3
Years time when they've got more sports to their portfolio, they may not want to pay over the odds for any sports. As someone else said, if BT offer £100 million SKY can outbid them with £200m. SKY have paid over the odds because thu are fighters of BT. But if BY actually submit a big, all sky have to do is bid a
lil higher. It's a good deal For Me.

Was I'm stitches at his marry first woman rant hahah the guy has got yet more column inches. Those making about him probably moaned the sport doednt get enough column inches.

Correct

And from what ive seen and read over the years IMO only sky rate league as a top class sport because of how big it is in aussie and how much they spent on it in the super league war and see it's potential over here, all other broadcasters see League as a parochial northern sport in the shadow of Union/football/tennis/cricket/snooker/golf we are a stocking filler at best and probably a albatross around there neck at worse as they try to get loved up with Union.
I doubt BT has even considered having RL in their portfolio and would probably laugh their behind of at paying 100's of millions for it.

They weren't. You commented on this thread calling Koukash 'a first class clown' for suggesting 'Noballs for England coach.' I was simply pointing out that Noble was coach of GB during one of Britain's only three test match wins against Australia in Australia in the last 38 years and that, Malcolm Reilly aside, his record stands up to any British coach since Jim Challinor. For that reason it seems odd you would say that Koukash lost all credibility for putting his name forward (among a host of others) that would do a better job than the current bloke as England coach.

PS Noballs is hilarious.

Hard not to like Koukash though. If he does with Salford what he clearly thinks he can then we'll all have to sit up and take notice.

Whinos fans... and those who also consider themselves Loiners... generally fear anyone in the game who happen to be equipped with an interesting personality. That's probably because the only mini period of success their club has ever achieved was orchestrated by three of the most dreary and tedious personalities ever to have graced the game... namely, Tony Smith, Kevin Sinfield and Gary Hetherington. Personality-wise, McNamara would not look out of place among those three.

I'll raise you a Jon Wilkin.

I'm still trying to work out how BT sport recoup the almost 1 billion quid it forked out for the champions league rights.

If you have the full package to sell TV broadband phone then they can make £500 per customer per year

I was at the season launch today and Dr K told how he received a call/contact from his PA to attend an important meeting the following day and that was the limit of the information.
On arrival the RFL had a 'production'? on a screen ? and the information about the Sky offer.
He looked around and without understanding body language or emotional telepathy he gleaned the fact that only one person understood the full implications.
My limited knowledge is that business deals and/or sponsorships are often long drawn out matters but this was instant and Dr K was the only one who objected to it.
I now read on page 2 of the RLE the perfunctory manner in which Premier Sport have been dismissed when I recall reading on here all the positivity about their coverage during the World Cup and elsewhere about the Championship coverage.

Why was there such haste for this television deal?
Ian Lenagan has already expressed his doubts.
With regard to the restructure and promotion and relegation Mark Aston,a very well-respected coach and administrator
has expressed his doubts.[url=http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/all-clubs/promotion-or-bust-is-real-fear-for-rivals-aston-1-6413882Story[/url
I don't think this is going to go away.
Dr K is not alone...

Except there be other costs for the full package, and I doubt even a 10th of that will count towards "sports profit"

Even then that's 2million customers on the full package over the contract to break even ...

Nope. Most overrated coach in RL history.
GB records, P 14, W 6, L 8

Go for the 2 Brian, go for the 2.