Don't know, the presenters just seem to spend their time nowadays reading out tweets and hashtags from famous sports people.

It always felt like it was on a loop just going round & round.
A pointless channel really.

Reckon Sky Sports News is important, it's often on in pubs and a lot seem to watch it, though it hasn't been on freeview for years. I've never noticed that things are usually in alphabetical order on there.

Perhaps we should be asking the RL press office, just how hard are they working, and just how many clubs in RL have a full-time Press Officer, pumping out stories, the reality is we seem to have a mix of lazy and incompetent people. Newspapers and News Channels are DESPERATE to fill up column inches and spare air-time with some actual NEWS.

OK, I do get that the BBC won't publish/broadcast, but most of the others WILL, the reality is we are S**t at getting the stories, pictures and VT out there. Years ago as a Student (27 to be precise), I worked for Hayter's (the sports news agency) based just off Fleet Street.

Football Clubs, Cricket Clubs, Boxing Trainers/Promoters used to inundate the offices with STORIES, Union Clubs too, but in the five months I worked there I cannot remember a single call, fax (or even Xerox as we had back then) from a Rugby League Club, NOT A SINGLE ONE!

RL clubs don't seem to take Marketing seriously at all and yet it's a major part in growing the sport. Infuriating to witness!

Right, so you agree with Sky that RL doesn't matter and isn't an important or must-see sport. But 'boxing' is.

Boxing is a sport that Sky can sell at £16+ per event on PPV (Froch v Groves generated £15.2m in PPV sales). Of course it's more important to Sky than Super League.

It also generates much more betting revenue that RL, something that a company like SKYBet might be interested in.

Honestly with comments like that you would think that "eyes on the box" was far more important to SKY then bums on seats, which we all know is far far more important to them.

Honestly some people

As far as I'm aware the BBC highlights are broadcast nationally on BBC2 around 1:30pm on a Tuesday, they moved the slot from silly hours of Monday morning as of the start of 2014 season.

What's the full run down on the CC not being shown free to air, is it just the rounds that are being removed from the BBC schedule?

The idiots in charge just can't seem to understand the long term damage they are doing to the sport, it's enough to make you weep..

Similarly, what stories can we make a big deal about? We don't really have BIG transfers, we don't have the BIG names, we don't have an international competition we are building for, games aren't being played.

The game is shut down, there is nothing happening, and we aren't creating nothing happening.

Iv mentioned this before but I read an interview with Eric Weinberg the EP of the NFL network talking about how the 'eventize' the NFL, that is the stuff going on around the game building up the game itself. So you get breaking news about injuries and rumours and the combine and the draft etc etc so when people weren't talking about the games themselves, they were talking about the things around the game and it is constantly in the conversation.

We don't do anything like that, there are very few talking points, we don't have a Burgess level signing, we don't have any possible game-changers, we have this crazy new system being explained constantly but that doesn't make anyone excited to see a particular game.

We have a game perfect for tv but don't really seem to be doing anything to present it well in the media age.

The NRL has a massive media dept and a massive budget, very little in the press about RL here at the moment (aside from the weekly drongo DUI charge). Its the off season, nothing happens much. I'm sure the local papers are covering pre season and the local clubs new signings but somehow I doubt the nationals are that interested in how Sio is finding the winter weather in Hull. Only big news story really is Todd Carney due to his infamy and he is in France well away from the English hounds.

so then we create it.

Why are all our signing dribbled out throughout the end of the season? Look at the attention the transfer deadline gets in football. Its wall to wall. We probably can't replicate what they do, we don't have enough clubs or moves to do it, but imagine if for instance we got reps of all the teams in a hotel and they had 1/2/3 days to hash out transfers and free agent signings. Sky Sports would go nuts for that. Have something similar to the combine with players publicly showing some of their athleticism.

Why aren't we watching an off-season documentary series from some young production company given completely unfettered access to a club?

Why don't we have a festive 9's series? it doesn't HAVE to all the best players if some don't want to play but as long as we get some of them, maybe a few legends and ringers involved as well people will watch, it will become a tradition and build.

A 4 month build up to the 2015 season should have started October 2014

With the world darts championships on at the minute, DARTS! Yes darts, has it's own channel on sky. It's been quite good seeing old matches, interviews and reviews of past players etc. It would be brilliant, if even just during the league season, if sky would do this for us. Interviews with Billy Boston and Neil Fox and the like whilst they are still around. Interviews with players I've only heard of and never listened to talking about their experiences and views on today's game. Past matches (not just grand finals) with reviews of players who were in the games. I'd love that. Big Nige, do what you can.

Agree with all that. Especially like the idea of having the transfers/signings etc thing and I think there is a decent sports & General interest tv market out there who would relish seeing the inner workings of a top sports club along with the trials & tribulations the players/coaches/owners etc have to go through each year. I'd love to see a documentary crew given unfettered access to a club for a whole season which can then be shown in the following off-season.

We could have a Boxing Day 9's comp. I was amazed at how few clubs had Boxing Day games this year, I think it's something we're missing out on.

reality is the vast majority of sports are not 12 months a year content and fan interest in the off season of any sport is minimal. Sky obviously have enough content in winter without spending money producing RL off season content and it's not the job of the RFL to produce it. Plenty of RL online you can watch if it's old games your after.

Anyone with a media background will tell you marketing for season launch needs to commence around 8-10 weeks before start and gradually hype up to it. I honestly think many of you live in Gaga land with your expectations of the Rfl.

Thank goodness for that, and there I was hoping that the RFL would tell the media that there maybe, possibly, could be, perhaps a RL international series against New Zealand come autumn 2015.

Now they don't have to.

Lets face it if the Union bods could promote their 2015 "entertainment" during the summer et al of 2014 and continue chirruping about it, they really were wasting their time as no one was interested.

Anyway it's nice to know that the RFL's responsibilty is not to promote the game they are responsible for, and the clubs wont do it because they would rather waste money on overseas crocks.

I look forward to the non interest and media involvement keeping its current low standard throughout the year.

I'm sure you wont be disappointed! Or you could get on social media where there is plenty of RL news coming out daily from clubs, supporters groups and governing bodies.

Great idea.

However, Sky and the game itself have spent the past two decades urinating on its history. Nothing, pre 1996 and pre-Super League is regarded as worthy of recollection, interest or comment. The game was unprofessional and played in winter when it was freezing, the pitches were all bogs, the players were covered in mud, they drank too much, they smoked too many cigs, and they were all slowcoach porkers with pot bellies playing in dilapidated grounds surrounded by slum housing.

If Sky, the RFL and the vast majority of summer-era fans are disgusted by the history of the game pre-1996 and have consistently sent out that message, why should anyone else be interested?

from next year Sky lose the champions league, that is a tonne of broadcast time they need to fill, we have just renegotiated with them, why aren't we filling it?

It costs us nothing to give a production company unfettered access to a club, £0. The BBC used to screen RL Raw which was a behind the scenes look at what was the NFP. It was very well received. There is a repeat of a documentary on Emile Heskey on sky sports tonight. Im pretty confident they would be happy to screening original programming in the form of a documentary like that, especially as the cost would be so minimal and serve as an advert for their own product.

It is the RFL's job to grow the game, to do that we need more content. People need to know who is playing, they need to care for them, they need to know the narrative. We do nothing to do that.

Oh great, im sure that has a huge reach to new fans.

Which only gets to people who search for it. The reason why print newspapers articles and TV programmes are so important is because they get to people who don't actively follow RL.
RL doesn't have a problem marketing/advertising to its die-hard fans, it has a problem getting to everyone else.

Social media is a no no for me, but can you see a problem somewhere?

When the Tour De France kicked off in Leeds during the summer, I walked part of the route on the day. A couple of miles along that route up Scott Hall Road at it's junction with Potternewton Lane, there were all sorts of festivities going on, marquees set up selling stuff. There was one marquee which stood out from the rest. It was giving away shirts, rugby balls, badges and stuff to kids. That marquee said RFU on it and was advertising England RU and the RU World Cup in 2015.

Meanwhile, back in Moonieworld, the Kiwi Series in 9 months time (allegedly) has disappeared off the radar completely as the RFL concentrate on flogging tickets to the converted for the Moonie Weekend, the CC Final and the SL Grand Final. Hardly a mention of the Kiwi Series in the compliant Moonie Express or Moonie Weekly publications for past couple of months either as they both pay their respects to the RFL for the critical (only?) advertising income they gratefully receive from them.

To be honest, I think that the clubs get too much of a free ride on that front. I agree that the RFL has it's failings (Will has pointed out the poor promotion of the NZ series) but the biggest problems in marketing this sport come at club level, not ruling body level.

We've got into this position where clubs have got absolutely no idea how to market their product. The local promotion is appalling, they have no idea how to use tactical offers to create long-term followers and they are not doing enough to attract the 'right' mix of supporters. That's not an RFL problem, it's a club one. Unfortunately, the clubs get an easier ride because it's easier, and fashionable, to blame Nigel Wood.

Oh no doubt that clubs are failing massively in this respect, but it's hard to criticise leeds or Wigan getting 15k when we will likely get that for CC semis and international games.

I'd also argue that we get a lot more 'bang for our buck' by marketing more centrally, I certainly think the build up for the start of the season is down to the RFL or Super League. Now the RFL have parachuted their man in to run SL they can't really complain that people expect something from them. Right now the RFL seem intent in controling as much as possible and being responsible for as little as possible. It's not a sustainable position.

Super league needs to be treated as a single entity where a rising tide lifts all boats. Leaving each individual club to just do their own thing just doesn't work.