Quote: TrinityIHC "My kneejerk reaction to this was very negative. But I've had a good think about it and I reckon that all in all, it's a positive move by the RFL.
1) BBC reported offered next to nothing for it, by accepting this we devalue the sport further. Similar to the Stobart deal - poor.
2) More and more TV is going online these days, if the RFL want to dip the toe in the water - when would be a better time to do a test?
3) If we are going down the road of "give it to the BBC and spread the gospel" - No floating fan is watching sport at 10am in the morning, let alone die hard fans. On top of that , England vs Samoa is likely to be quite one sided and I dont see it being a great tool for converting the unbelievers tbh.
I reckon we should all just chip in the £3.50, back the RFL so they can show to other providers we have got some clout. Maybe this could be the first step on the road to breaking free of Sky's shackles?'"
Yeah I've been back and forth on this a bit since it got announced.
Obviously RL has to tread the fine line between devaluing it's International game, earning some coin and getting as many people watching as they can on terrestrial, obviously far easier said than done. Something I'd love to know is if the RFL have sounded out other channels like C4 & C5 to see if they maybe want to see if thers's a audience for them to make use of, and maybe if it's reasoanly successful it could be something that could be built on.
As for the BBC. RL has been on that channel for decades and hasn't exactly brought fans flocking to the game during that time. So I don't excatly buy the spead the game thing, although we do need to maintain a presense on free to air. Obviously they don't get week in week out SL games but still. BBC for ages had it too good for too long as far as being giving the Countries Premier Sporting Competitions. They should have learned by now they can't low ball sports if they hav a genunine interest. Ateotd with all the licencing fees they get, if they really wanted to fill a slot on BBC2 in a morning or wherever they wanted to put it they could of and got a 1 million viewers, who I'd guess would all be hardcore RL fans.
Saying that if there is a time to try something like this , why not give it a crack now and see how it all works from the logistics to how many people buy, if it falls flat on it's face, then we'll know and move on. Tbh apart from the big events like World Cup and 4 Nations, The RFL in most cases are damned if they do and damned if they don't imo.
Like others have said as RL fan, a 100% RL channel would be awesome. Where we get SL games, NRL games, Internations etc, the lot would be on, along with some great RL shows to completment it. Like others said , then give the public the chance to either buy a standalone channel, or make it part of the Sky Sports package. Anyway it makes too much sense, it'd never happen.