Has anyone heard the rumour about the possibilty of the halting of promotion and reducing the superleague again ?

yes heard that one , reducing the number of clubs to one so you can play with yourself your new nickname could be the s

Yep, heard that one.

Yes, I've heard they are reducing Super League to Slag for the benefit of the social media generation, who still can't string a sentence together.

BTW, how did you suddenly and miraculously learn to spell?

they should increase to 16 team with one up one down or maybe 2 up 2 down the current format is a joke playing some teams possibly 4/5 times its boring and repetitive and is damaging the game in this country make sky pay more money they are killing the sport we all love while paying Union massive money for something no one watches in big numbers on sky sorry but rant over feel strongly about this

unfortunately that's how it is union always draws bigger crowds and generates a fortune in income compared to league they get in 2 games what the full rugby league attains in a weekends rugby as far as crowds go.. if sky pulled the plug the game would go part time for a lot of clubs , we need the pearsons and hudgells of this world despite their faults

You cannot possibly try and turn this into a serious thread.

Although, it would be a very good achievement seeing as most threads start off serious and then turn ridiculous.

Don't worry billynotsosmart will be along to derail it soon

All that genius hard work and editing for nothing, Goose. Serious thread it is.

Had a bloody good laugh though. Thanks for that. One of your best.

I don't disagree we need sky or some other TV channel but to sell the game as cheap as they have to sky when apart from football its the best and most watched club sport they have in their listing was terrible, and sold our game short its always going to be very difficult to beat the Aussys when our cap is 3 times lower than there's and there is no under grade comp apart from u19s which is like the old colts, we should go back to 14 teams then strive to reach 16 in the top tier with maybe 2 up 2 down, if its true about reducing further the game will be a joke but I can not see that working at all

Didn't he start the thread?

I'm lost is the circus in town? Is it not in town? Is it a real circus? Who is Billysmart and has he/has he not got dyslexia? Is he a c#nt?

Has this thread been derailed or was it off the tracks in the first place?

Is this a real thread or not?

Did we get relegated? What the f#ck is going on?

We need more people in fishtails riding scooters to sort this out. Pronto.

Finally someoone whu speaks my language . It is a real fred knowing the idiots that run the superleagua anyfing is possibul.

Oh no he's been on his bong again....

Also whose Fred?

I told you he'd be back to derail

I actually have some sympathy for the RFL with the sky deal. They were on a hiding to nothing.

Did anyone else want it?
If they did would moving to a limited viewed platform enhance the game?
What were our bargaining points / threats to make sky pay more?

You just have to look at what has (apparently) happened with the champions league to see what chasing the biggest cash price can do. There were reports that viewing figures have plummeted and this has seen a subsequent reduction of sponsorship for the tournament. In RL this would knock on massively to the clubs as it would be our sole way of anyone seeing who doesn’t attend.

Realistically as a sport we have to be on either terrestrial (never going to happen league wise) or failing that SKY. BT / Premier sports have so few viewers at this time it’s not worth going for. If after the deal runs out the landscape has changed then there may be a stick to beat SKY with but at the moment there is very little room to manoeuvre.

I think it was the length of the Sky deal which was what people were moaning about.

By the time of the next deal though, BT Sport will be much more established than it is at the moment. Don't forget that since their acquisition of EE, millions of EE customers can now access BT Sport. It's growing pretty quickly, especially now they can offer full mobile/internet/landline/tv bundles. Just this week, BT Sport signed a deal for boxing too. They're be a different beast by the time of the next deal (in terms of audience access), but I fully agree that SL didn't have much choice other than to go with Sky at the time.

I agree totally but in hindsight the length of the deal could be seen as ideal for all the reasons you have quoted.

If they had gone for a 2 or 3 year deal then they would be negotiating from the back of an economic downturn and dwindling attendance figures, not sure what has been the knock on to SKY viewing figures but I would expect they have tailed off a bit.

A lot of people really panned the RFL for the deal with very little in the way of other options or any coherent negotiating strategy.

If this was a true thread then the RFL would have to re iintroduce the franchise system. Wakefield and Cas would fail on their grounds and Salfod and Hudds struggle attracting fans, which teams would go?

Sky offered their deal well in advance of when the contract was up. No one else had even bid as the RFL hadn't asked for bids. Most people were annoyed at the fact the RFL didn't wait until the contract was up then inviting bids like previous deals. Sky basically had the RFL over a barrel stating that the offer on the table wouldn't be on the table if they went out to tender.

Congratulations Burton. You must be chuffed to speak the same language as Billy Smarts Circus. Such an honour has rarely been bestowed. Where did you learn to speak fluent Uzbek then?

As I said though what was the option?

Say to SKY that we'll take our chances knowing full well terrestrial tv was never going to happen and the rest of the competition was (and still was at time of tender) far to immature to be a viable option at even a double money offer.

Yes there needs to be other avenues looked into next time but as a minority sport we have very little in the way of leverage and SKY know that

The RFL should be constantly schmoozing other broadcasters concurrent to this current SKY deal. That way they will know if there are any other interested parties. This would in turn facilitate a decision whether or not to go out to tender next time.

Looking at the waistlines of Wood and Barwick, it would appear they already have had several dummy runs off the back of large expense accounts.

this is exactly what winds me up about sky they pretend to be the big promoters and supporters of the game when in fact they are keeping our game down with no hope of catching the Aussys with now all our very best players moving to the NRL they are in effect broadcasting a second rate comp which you would think they wouldn't want to do , they want rugby league on the cheap and lets face it there getting it the only reason why we have a top tier of 12 teams is there is not enough TV money to cover the costs of the clubs simple

Agree with all you say, but would add decisions made 30+ years ago started the rot! Moving from Saturday afternoons to Sunday. Those that remember, any sport on a Sunday was controversial but we went ahead as the powers that were thought it would reduce the clash with soccer. What it did do was alienate us from the London based media as they had their deadlines & Sundays did not fit. Until then, final score on the BBC always showed League results & tables. once we moved away from Saturdays that stopped. The live second half on the BBC also stopped as they were not prepared to show sport on a Sunday at that time. Yes Sky money at the time saved the game but the full cost of that move is coming home to roost now. I remember listening to an ex FC chairman explain that at the time of the Sky deal they had tried to give the game to the BBC as long as they committed to showing one live game a week at peak time & a magazine type show rounding up the rest of the games. He did say they would have made more from sponsors. with national prime time exposure than they originally got from sky. What we can do to save the game is not clear but we have a fight on with the cash now in soccer & union? The BBC now seem more interested in pushing American football than League. All that plus a rapid decline in player numbers it is going to be hard times.