Ive always thought were a big enough club to have a subscription ‘Rhinos TV’ type thing, it could be included in the ‘gold’ membership as well as being available for £5 a month or maybe even £10.

Show full games, it could be done so they aren’t live (to stop it cutting into attendance figures) have some decent content rather than the terrible after game interviews, behind the scenes stuff, fans commentary at games, coaches interviews, former players etc

Id definitely pay on too of my ST for something like that.

It's a nice efficient way to generate extra revenue. I'm guessing the broadcasters might not like it or there might be some contractual block on doing it, but that's part of your negotiations.

I mean they do a decent job with the free YouTube content but yes some BTS exclusive content would be good. Games live or recorded - I just think there must be thousands of potential subscribers out there, current ST holders and others from all over the place. I reckon you could do £30-40k extra revenue per month in-season and build on that over time.

I think hull kr already do something similar so don’t think theres a contractual issue?

Seems a no brainer to me especially as the cost to entry to actually film some stuff is relatively cheap these days, JJB also has a fair bit of experience in this area, wouldn’t want his mate alex simmons involved though i thought he was really poor on rugby AM

At the moment there is no possibility of showing a live league game - Sky hold exclusive rights to SL - however, that will change next year as the Sky agreement is for them to show 2 games per week exclusively, the rest can be live streamed (with the option of selling 10 games a year to another broadcaster), so this opens up the possibility of clubs or the RFL through OurLeague streaming the games for a fee.

I assume Hull KR (like Warrington) stream the games after 48 hours, Warrington have a Facebook Live account that hey charge £3.50 per month for I think, that shows delayed games and old classics etc - I think they could do more content than they do though with pre match interviews and similar.

They already have the lad who covers Academy (Dan?) but the production value would need to significantly improve for first team / commercial service.

Like you say, it could be a standalone service or taken in conjuction with matchday attendance tickets. Maybe I am the only potential customer in the world (or you and me!) but I suspect there are many more.

If we're serious about broadening the market of the game we have to use technology to take it to the consumer IMO. It's a 1:many solution which has huge potential scope commercially as long as a) the team is good and entertaining to watch and b) the value add in additional content is there.

Personally id be happy with games showed after the event like hull kr and Warrington do, but i can see how live streaming would be welcomed by a lot of people, I honestly don’t think it would affect crowds by any meaningful measure, I mean are our games shown on sky now significantly lower crowds than the non broadcast ones?

I wonder if the club might worry about cannibalising ST sales if they did this.

Couldn’t agree more. Move the games away from the YouTube channel. Have live women’s, women’s academy, U18s, U16s and reserve games on Rhinos TV, plus behind the scenes footage, as well as in depth interviews with players from JJB. You could then add extended highlights of matches, or even the full replay. Add the catalogue of past games too it. Give it free to gold members and then payable for all other members.

However, what they also could do is one season ticket fits all to attend. Plus the likelihood is the double headers returning for 2022 too.

How much do you think they should charge? How many would pay and how much do you think it costs to show a live game? I doubt it would add up financially.

Its fine showing 1 or 2 camera junior stuff that looks poor when its free on youtube but start charging people and suddenly the standard would need tp go up significantly.

£10 a month is very reasonable, with 2500 punters and and 8 month season that’s £200k for literally nothing. One of your marquee players for free…

Could of course be much much bigger.

Wigan seem to have around 700 subscribers paying £5.99 a month. With equates to around £4k a month over 8 months £32k so £200k seems optimistic. Tho Wigan do sell day passes for 1st team friendlies which seems to bring in an extra 250 people.. If Leeds matched that it wouldnt make financial sense. The club make more charging £5 per academy home game to around 200/300 people pre-covid. If they offer subscriptions some of those wouldnt go to games as they could watch at home so that money would be lost.

The club would be better trying to get more people to attend scholarship and academy games live next year along with the womens teams, netball and wheelchair at a fiver a pop.

Leeds are the best supported SL club on social media etc. - by some distance. I think you look at the trends: crowds are nothing like they were in the old Bradford Bulls days for example. You would reasonably expect regular 15,000 attendances back then. People (especially young ones) are increasingly attached to mobile devices and pads. Even if we had a truly successful side would be be able to get the fabled 20,000s in at Headingley?

We've been wringing our hands literally for years about attendances and gate revenues, and yet funnily enough we don't seem to be making any inroads. And it's not as simple as just doing "better marketing".

Also streaming allows you to produce the kind of value-adding content that punters rocking up on game day alone would never get access to.

There is the contractual angle which sounds like it's easing up (?) but then there's the worry like you say Marty, would digital sales cannibalise existing gate receipts. I suspect those that want to/can attend games live will still do that - but there are many more supporters out there who don't/can't.

It's important to recognise that the trend is Sky funding is terribly bad as well. The new deal is something like £26m per year versus £40m on the last deal.

To add, part of the new Sky deal is that Sky have cameras and produce ALL UK games in 2022, so the cost of production I think will be minimal. There will be other costs to consider I suppose, but there is potential in this I feel that isn't being talked about too much - all the focus is on the lower terms of the deal, which is of course disappointing. Sky are paying less, but they are getting less too and are picking up additional costs, we are net behind I think of course in terms of the previous deal, but there are opportunities to progress.

youre a glutton for punishment

I think the main issue apart from the deal with Sky is until we regularly fill 90% of the stadium for both tv/non-tv games, then they could look into this but I think we're roughly only filling 50-60% going off when we came back from Covid.