How?? We were never bloody on TV!

The announced figures at Bradford have been a source of plenty of amusement for visiting fans. It would be interesting to know to what extent IMG have followed through with their promised "ad hoc audits."

I didn't count tv at all in my number for that reason

IMG aren't auditors. The the RFL.

We are on TV less than other SL clubs because we don't have a good or consistent product to showcase the sport, but our league games will not be on TV at all in the championship and this will impact on our IMG grading

We didn't score any points for TV reach in the IMG ratings.

We can't score any fewer when we go down.

We did (all super league clubs do) but as time away from super league grows that TV coverage and associated IMG points will be reduced. This would change were there to be a TV deal for the championship, but as far as I'm aware, there isn't one for next season

I was jibing at the fact we aren't sodding picked enough, but whilst it's either as much as 1 point or as little as .75 points, it won't affect our score.

The score is the average of the previous 3 seasons i.e. our score won't change.

Yes, for sure. I must admit having read the Meta Business Source section in the Grading Criteria document and the detailed and complex procedure for analysing social media data, I'm a little nervous if this is being done in-house by the RFL having seen their attempts to run their own website.

There are only 2 scores for viewership.
It's an average so it doesn't matter how many games we are on and it's above or below 150k.
So we can either be 0.75 or 1.0. So the most we can lose is 0.25.

I believe some games or on tv? Viaplay for example tonight. This I would imagine will contribute.

Even more important is that we get to 1895 and the championship final. I would imagine these will be televised and count.

I appreciate there may be less exposure or numbers but there may be some points to be had.

As it stands there is no tv deal in place for the
Championship next year. Viaplay won’t take it again, they are pulling out of the UK market.

The whole point of the IMG ratings is for clubs to improve over time and increase their rating score. a clubs rating can actually go down as well as up.

means sponsorship revenue is likely to plummet.
Will ASUS, a major brand name still be sponsoring us next season with what will be very poor national tv exposure.

As the new East Stand should be open by the start of next season

the opening game should
attract a decent crowd, we should be looking at around 4k for that at least.
That should get us off to a decent start attendance wise.

Yeah if it’s done properly could attract more! Needs looking at to gain maximum benefit.
It’s a pity our 150 years has been little mentioned and gained us nothing!
Of all the years to have possibly our worst season ever we chose this one!

The viewership rating can't go down - we already get .75 (the minimum score).

That part of the point scoring may not go down, but if standards aren't maintained on all the scoring points required to get an A grade,you can actually drop from an A rating to a B rating,that is the point i am making.

Reading this just makes me sad at what the sport is doing to itself. Yes we all know the sport needs better infrastructure, digitalisation and marketing. But don't sacrifice sporting competition for it.

The championship has been super exciting this year. Look how close the relegation battle is, three teams on same points, two on same points difference. The battle for the play-offs has been excellent. Let's throw it all away so clubs can fill out questionnaires on social media following. All it does is set fans against each other.

Instead of talking about signing a decent scrum-half to take you to the top next year we're talking about signing someone who's good at TikTok videos. I'll give the IMG box ticking 3 years max before we change the structure again!

Anyway rant over and looking forward to visiting Belle Vue next year. The new stand looks excellent.

From next season every SL game will be shown live with the increased publicity and sponsorship that brings but maybe a reduction in supporter numbers.

Be interesting how saturation coverage effects viewing figures of individual games, especially by casual fans. I watch all the sky games (eventually), some viaplay and the majority of the streamed games but don't have time nor the inclination really to include any NRL for example (other than the Grand Final).
I rarely watch the Sky games live even when I'm not attending our games so I will probably end up with a stack of recordings waiting for time available that may or may not get watched. Could well be I do as now and watch just the highlights on the skysports website.

Critically important we show up strong with a win too in that game. Make them see something to come back.

I checked and it does say broadcast Live in some press releases but they haven't agreed who will broadcast or on what platform.
Sponsorship won't be big on Our League. It will be more about the in ground visible to TV advertising I guess and we'll have to find a way to push that.
If our social media team does what IMG want them to, they will still have a massive reach.

I'd go so far as to say that, moving to the IMG grading system and away from on field performance, effectively means that RL at the top level is no longer a "sport".

For a club to be relegated or promoted due to a box ticking excercise is fundamentally wrong and far from "elevating" the game, it's more likely to have the opposite effect.

Sure, lets set some minimum standards and more importantly enforce them but, the future of the game looks very bleak just now.

I disagree. If we only want to talk about signing the good scrum half at the expense of infrastructure and 'fandom', we'll end up a really nice amateur sport where the best players are playing other sports.
Time has moved on since the days when people are happy to watch sport in a 100 year old wooden stadium.