The daily star is reporting that that the BBC did bid but the RFL rejected it.

As for the RFL handing it over to the BBC for free. That would be a very silly thing to do.

Maybe the BBC bid was really low. Can't see why else the RFL would turn it down

Just received an email about this. £3.49 is the "early bird price", so I'm guessing £5 later on. Can't see many fans paying for this.

So the RFL are set to charge £3.50 for people to stream the England/Samoa with it being free for those who brought Magic weekend tickets. What's everyone's thoughts (i can guess)

My views:-

Obviously the RFL think an SL fan supporting England is more valuable than a championship fan with Summerbash ticket holders being omitted from a free ticket.

Any RL fan considering paying for the stream (and i can't imagine they will be many to start with) will most likely be going to the magic weekend anyway so the amount of people paying will earn the RFL a bus fare.

I can understand them maybe using this fixture to experiment other options than the BBC who probably criminally underpay for RL rights. Them walking away from the BBC rather than just bending over for them might force them into paying more money for the rights. I think i read somewhere they paid £40millon for the 6 nations rights. Knock a couple of zeros of the figure and you'll probably get in the region what they pay for RL. While the 6 nations is bigger than RL, they won't get a million times more viewers than us. I would hope they maybe went to ITV or Channel 4 before using this crazy streaming idea.

It will be fine RL is a massive sport and doesn't need any exposure particularly at International level which is thriving.

Loads will buy it, excellent idea by the RFL.

I have emailed the RFL to make my feelings very clear on this subject! What a way to alienate their already dwindling fan base!

Its decisions like this which validate my position that supporting my club (Cas) will always come before supporting the national team, which it should'nt.

So are people moaning about the price of this? Or just the practice in general?
Anyone moaning at having to pay £3 to watch a game of RL needs to give their head a shake.

One journo is reporting that one of the broadcasters bid less than £10k for the rights to show this game. I can see where the rfl are coming from when broadcasters are taking the p!ss out of our sport with ridiculous offers like that.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. So dumb, it deserves to be boycotted. I spend plenty of my hard-earned on watching rugby league, but I wouldn't pay a penny for this. We can't afford to encourage such idiocy. It won't bring the game to any but the core support, and they will make precious little out of them, and serve them right.

If broadcasters are indeed 'taking the ' then I'm afraid the RFL have only themselves to blame. I have little doubt that they would have made more from a FTA broadcaster than they will from this doomed exercise.


As for giving my head a shake, I spend plenty on watching RL; until recently I was living down south and travelling to Wigan games regularly throughout the season, with hotel bills and travelling costs it wasn't cheap. So I'll take no lectures on being a skinflint, but I wouldn't stream this if it was £1.99; we can't afford to encourage such idiocy.

Of course it's not the price, hardly anyone's d about 3 quid but on top of SKY, TV license, Premier Sports plus broadband and line rental, it's a bit of a kick in the face to have to pay to watch a friendly that are usually broadcast on BBC.

Last week we talked about how paid sports TV packages have no future, this week we don't want RFL stream matches (which people said were the future), but want the rights to be given away for nothing. One thing is certain, no matter what they do, RFL will always do the wrong thing.

If its part of a focused, attempt to look into alternative revenue streams and way of doing things, great. If its one man streaming from his Nokia and the quality of production is bad it'll be a disaster.

A possible alternative would have been to stream the match via Facebook/ Youtube directly FOC.

Just a thought but are the Samoan players in super league going to be released for this game? If not, we won't be facing the best opposition after all.

Encouraged by your example, I have done the same, mate.

My kneejerk reaction to this was very negative. But I've had a good think about it and I reckon that all in all, it's a positive move by the RFL.

1) BBC reported offered next to nothing for it, by accepting this we devalue the sport further. Similar to the Stobart deal - poor.

2) More and more TV is going online these days, if the RFL want to dip the toe in the water - when would be a better time to do a test?

3) If we are going down the road of "give it to the BBC and spread the gospel" - No floating fan is watching sport at 10am in the morning, let alone die hard fans. On top of that , England vs Samoa is likely to be quite one sided and I dont see it being a great tool for converting the unbelievers tbh.

I reckon we should all just chip in the £3.50, back the RFL so they can show to other providers we have got some clout. Maybe this could be the first step on the road to breaking free of Sky's shackles?

I can't see anyone mention that you get it free if you buy magic weekend tickets.

Next to nothing plus 1-2million audience is worth far more than next to nothing and an audience of 10-20k.

As for more and more tv going on-line the one area that isn't happening as much is sport because it doesn't offer the same advantages as scripted tv to online broadcasters.

PPV just doesn't work for sports outside of boxing/mma. It didn't when then FA tried it, It didn't when the premier league tried it. It won't when we try it. Sport, especially live sport, lends itself to tv viewership. It's an event that lends itself to s large screen, has to be watched at a set time and can't be 'binge watched'.

The RFL would be far better looking at joining forces with the NRL and selling their Rugby League channel as a subscription via all platforms, Sky, BT, freeview, and on-line all over the world.

1-2m audience for RL at 10:00am? Not a prayer. Even the purists will have nagging kids and cars to wash at that time on a Saturday morning.

I know what you mean with sport being a lot slower to go online, but that's because the major broadcasters have got most sports by the balls and are paying almost all the player salaries. It is changing though - take this new deal the NFL have got with Amazon

[urlhttp://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-amazon-nfl-20170405-story.html[/url

$50m for 10 games



Obviously I am well aware that RL is not quite the NFL - but if this works, I think we could begin to see more and more of this kind of thing. I want to RFL to be in as strong a position as possible when it comes to negotiating.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/39564040

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/39564040

That's another point actually. What revenue can the RFL realistically expect from this? £60-75k? To make it an actually decent stream they'll have to take a full camera crew with all HD setups, commentators, pay for the bandwidth it's going to consume, maybe even a studio, insurance etc. The costs are going to be probably going to leave this with a tiny profit.

But that's a hugely different situation. There are other ways those games are being broadcast and Amazon prime is simply pay tv plus.it isn't a 1 off PPV event.

If we had a channel it can be sold to providers paying carriage fees to make it part of their bundle, it can be sold as a stand alone product to those who don't want to subscribe to a bundle, it can be sold on-line as a subscription. We can sell packages of games to different providers including fta. PPV is a short term cash grab that won't grab all that much money

Yeah I've been back and forth on this a bit since it got announced.

Obviously RL has to tread the fine line between devaluing it's International game, earning some coin and getting as many people watching as they can on terrestrial, obviously far easier said than done. Something I'd love to know is if the RFL have sounded out other channels like C4 & C5 to see if they maybe want to see if thers's a audience for them to make use of, and maybe if it's reasoanly successful it could be something that could be built on.

As for the BBC. RL has been on that channel for decades and hasn't exactly brought fans flocking to the game during that time. So I don't excatly buy the spead the game thing, although we do need to maintain a presense on free to air. Obviously they don't get week in week out SL games but still. BBC for ages had it too good for too long as far as being giving the Countries Premier Sporting Competitions. They should have learned by now they can't low ball sports if they hav a genunine interest. Ateotd with all the licencing fees they get, if they really wanted to fill a slot on BBC2 in a morning or wherever they wanted to put it they could of and got a 1 million viewers, who I'd guess would all be hardcore RL fans.

Saying that if there is a time to try something like this , why not give it a crack now and see how it all works from the logistics to how many people buy, if it falls flat on it's face, then we'll know and move on. Tbh apart from the big events like World Cup and 4 Nations, The RFL in most cases are damned if they do and damned if they don't imo.

Like others have said as RL fan, a 100% RL channel would be awesome. Where we get SL games, NRL games, Internations etc, the lot would be on, along with some great RL shows to completment it. Like others said , then give the public the chance to either buy a standalone channel, or make it part of the Sky Sports package. Anyway it makes too much sense, it'd never happen.

Guess it's a way to dip your toes into the water of a self-serving streaming network. Seems to be working well for WWE. Offer enough content and people will pay a monthly subscription for sure.

£10 A month from 100k is only £12m a year. Then there are the costs of production, marketing, the infrastructure needed to broadcast, lower sponsorship, etc.

I got my (standard?) reply from the RFL to the email I sent today.

They do mention in it that the they have a "long-term contract" with the BBC to screen the CC until 2020.

I wonder what will happen thereafter?

Why pay for it when you can steam it for free if you look in the right place.

I won't be paying for it out of principle. I already pay too much for Sky Sports and Premier Sports for RL, and my Licence Fee goes towards the BBC stuff. I'm sure the RFL see plenty of my cash.

I bet it would get a good sized audience on maybe BBC2 on a Saturday morning when the alternatives are Saturday Kitchen or Soccer AM, both of which are incredibly tired. Lots of casual viewers looking for something to watch, having breakfast or a brew before they head out for the day.

Another concern - who the hell outside of RL circles will ever know this game takes place? Oh I'm sure the RFL will be all over social media - but unless you follow them how will you hear about it? They could advertise but that isn't cheap. I'll be surprised if they get more than a few thousand watching.


Not sure about that - if it's not on a mainstream channel how will the streaming sites get hold of it?

Whatever, I'll probably be able to watch it on YouTube a few hours later anyway.