I know this keeps coming up but part of me thinks that the competition over football rights like the Champions League will make Sky value us more and part thinks that there is going to be a smaller pot.

Why? sky have lost the champions league now so they will have to fill it with something

they have tied up the premiership for the next 5 years

so how does it effect us???

be interesting if bt bidded for rl next what would sky bid!!!!

Depends whether you see Sky Sports as a stand-alone business or as a mechanism for convincing punters to by Sky's technology. I worry that it is (or was) the latter and it's now served its purpose. Ten years ago I reckon Sky would have bought the Champions League rights almost regardless of cost. Bit by bit their sports portfolio is being eroded. I'm worried that RL won't have sufficient profile to attract a serious bid from BT and if it stays on Sky the amount they're prepared to pay won't increase and may decrease.

ITV has no LIVE sport now.

They could do with something to fill that gap.

One game on a Friday and one on a saturday or sunday with a mixture of being on ITV 1 and ITV 2 for a fraction of the cost would be a good starter for them to get back into the sports business.

They are very strong where RL is strong and if we marketed the game properly and had someone sensible negotiating a contract could easily move to ITV.

If we won the WC this year the game could take off in leaps and bounds,

Unfortunatley none of the above is going to happen.

When RL gets its house in order, only then will networks consider investing.

we'll stay with sky sports but on reduced money

we are their b*tches

We're more likely to get on ITV4, but in the digital age where everyone has access to ITV4, this shouldn't be an issue.

as for SKY, while I get the argument that they have already built their empire, if they lose more rights people will start to cancel. It isn't just the Champions League they have lost, they have also lost domestic RU. And while the Premier League is still the biggest draw by some distance, people will start to question whether they can do without the cost and just watch the football in the pub instead.

Whatever happens I think one the main aims of the next TV deal has to be to get a regular highlights package on free to air TV at a sensible time and shown nationally. We need to end this BBC farce where its shown on the M62 only at various times in the middle of the night. We should make them guarantee us that slot after MOTD2 on a Sunday nationally.

BBC paid RU squillions for 30million viewers for 6nations.
3 SL games on FTA a week could easily drawf those figures. Come on RFL get a better deal!

It’ll stop my wife moaning on when her soaps keep getting shifted about for some banal nil –nil bore fest.

So, to me, it's all good.

Think thats how the other TV corporations see us, just a bi product of SKY Sport. Good job we have the World Cup to keep our heads out of the water.

Yes they do.

Sky losing midweek football is not enough on it's own to effect us (a weekend sport) IMO - Be interesting to see how they react though.

The Super League highlights program is on at 1:30pm on a Monday or Tuesday on BBC2, has been all last season, nationally..
Could be better but far improved than the 2am slot it had down here previously

That though is also the position of BT, particularly at this embryonic stage of the channel.. Much depends on how 'big' they view RL as to how much value they are likely to put on the RL viewers and the value of the wider collateral benefits they might bring. To be honest it leaves us in very choppy waters imo.

Sky are moving away from live sport and spending more on original comedy and drama.

The likelihood is that they won't put up too much of a struggle to keep hold of anything other than their crown jewel events (Premier League football and international cricket).

There's certainly no chance they would want to get into a bidding war to keep hold of SL rights if BT Sport did come knocking, so there's little chance of the RFL being able to turn it into an auction to get more money from the highest bidder.

As usual, the loser in all this is the viewer, who ends up having to spend more money to follow any sports they are interested in.

Am I the only one who seriously wishes EVERY sports programme was a pay-per-view event, and so could actually pick what individual events I wanted to watch, rather than pay for a whole package and have sports I have no interest in (Golf and Darts being two off the top of my head)?

Think when the next round of bids come in we could potentially have four bidders for SL. Premier Sports, ITV, BT & Sky sports. Could be very interesting.

Sky have literally nothing to show on most Tuesdays and Wednesdays now especially as you are not allowed to schedule domestic football on the same night as European football.

Expect midweek Super League to fill that void simply because there is very little else that could.

Sky have literally nothing to show on most Tuesdays and Wednesdays now especially as you are not allowed to schedule domestic football on the same night as European football.

Expect midweek Super League to fill that void simply because there is very little else that could.

Thursday night SL, monday night SL, we already are doing that, pretty much.

If you have a decent PC and a reasonable internet connection, there is absolutely no need to subscribe to multiple live sports channels any more.

Plenty of reliable live streams of events out there online, you can watch anything that might be on ESPN, Premier or BT Sport without a subscription.

The Champions League deal will be great news for the Football League, as Sky will most likely use this (if anything) to fill the gap. Football League games happen on Champions League match nights anyway, so it is an easy option for both Sky and the FL.

I don't know where people have got this idea that ITV have suddenly gained an interest in rugby league. They've not shown any interest previously.

Nice legal suggestion there: Andy

If anything, ITV will look to squander their millions on Aviva Premiership games given that they already have the highlights.

Next bidding war will be in the Union. If Sky lose Union then it will be interesting to see if they hold on to league by pumping money in; or whether they'll just try and blow competition out the water by offering a ridiculous TV deal to other sports to try and keep a stranglehold on their rights.

I'd quite like BT to put in a bid, just to drive up the price even if they have no real interest in the rights.

Would it be worth the RFL splitting up games into blocks like the Premier League do with their TV rights? Get individual networks bidding on packages. Split up all the big games and mix them in with some less attractive games to make all packages worth bidding for and one play-off game, then have one specifically for derby games, then have one for Magic Weekend games.

Fully - this is where the RFL need some real commercial grunt in the negotiation process. It won't make much difference if nobody wants SL, but packaging up the offering to TV channels correctly can make a big difference when there's the slightest competition.

I'd also be looking at leveraging into Australian free-to-air for full SL games. 7mate has been showing the WC here - and doing a pretty good job. If SL could get shown FTA, even at night, it would be worth far more than if its on Fox as a filler.