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.

The second half games that were shown on the BBC were always cup games not league games and they stopped when we got rid of the county cups and the JPS / regal trophy

Trust me they also showed league matches ( I played in a couple) first half highlights followed by live second half results & league tables following. Yes there were a lot more competitions including midweek BBC floodlit trophy.

You are dead right because when it was on they had the football results on the bottom of the screen and at half time has well

With the cost of sport now especially football and rugby union to a degree you would think the BBC would be knocking our door down for a sport they could champion and show live on one of there channels with real value for money to the tax payer a Saturday afternoon slot for a super league or championship game to complete with football surely it would be worth a punt to them you would think

The BBC have given up on sport

I suspect that if the BBC started to really support & push our sport they would loose the union they still have? I am not sure but that is what I heard 30 odd years ago when League tried to get them to push our game as they had done with snooker & channel 4 were doing with American football.

on the BBC website this week it was claimed that English international rugby union players would now be earning £1 million pounds per season.
This been made up of £300K from the rfu, £400K plus in club salaries and the rest from sponsorship and endorsements.
This kind of expenditure can only me achieved if the clubs and rfu have a huge income from a major TV company. Who intern need to sell the matches to generate their income.
This will not be the bbc, so I would expect them to be looking for another sport to promote in place of international rugby union.
If redhall are on the ball they should be courting the beeb now, not at the end of the sky deal.

when would the bbc show games? which channel? forget bbc1 friday night, nothing will budge the soaps, bbc2? possibly, saturday and sunday only realistic option, then when events like wimbledon come round and its wall to wall tennis what happens to live games?

The BBC wont be paying a lot for union or any other sport as the charter dose not allow it, but union makes its money from international games TV rights world wide, BT sports TV pays a lot to cover union as well as SKY. What coverage on the BBC dose do is attract top end sponsors like Guinness, Rolex & the like, who are after the people who are prepared to pay over £60 a ticket to watch at Twickenham, something we can only dream of. Union will use every trick they can to keep the BBC including the threat of removing access if any other sport threatens. They have done it before. As I posted earlier free to air coverage at peak times nation wide is worth a lot in sponsorship deals.