My dream setup would be:

Premium Games major platform 2/week
1 other game/week on Free To Air (FTA)

Online Subscription Service £150/season upfront or £15/month
All games shown live and on-demand (including a timeline to skip to tries and big hits etc), pre/post match analysis, past seasons games, and highlights.

Weekly program to include highlights of games played that week on FTA

Weekly program of just tries and big hits on FTA/Major Platform

Exactly... and we don't have to give the FTA game away, simply stipulate that 1 game must be on terrestrial, and then let that go to the highest bidder. Sky will no doubt reduce their offer for another 2 or 3 games per week, and overall I'm sure the TV deal will initially drop, but it's short term pain for long term gain. Using digital better would also help make up the shortfall.

Ultimately, we need more people watching the game to broaden our appeal to sponsors/advertisers. In terms of a TV deal helping this, FTA coverage seems the most obvious answer to me.

It's not just sponsors and advertisers, it's fans paying on the gate too.........Let's face it, we're pretty limited when it comes to attracting new fans to come to games, but get a Friday evening game Live on BBC, ITV or Channel 4 or 5 and they'll get a million + tuning in. Clever tactic would be for the RFL to run a competition during the broadcast and maybe a couple of adverts....same for SKY TV advertising their latest deal.......if people like it they'll start looking out for it.....


The cost of an outside broadcast set up is quite high. For a club to buy the equipment themselves would be insane......but to have the infrastructure put in place for an easy set up would be good....5 Cameras in set places and 2 Mobile units.......but it's still going to set you back £50,000 for the game....so you need subscribers in the thousands prepared to pay up front....and we now how free with their cash RL fans are

The NRL have the luxury of TV companies at every game, so on-selling that via NRL pass is simple......a mate of mine works in the OB business...a Premiership game runs to £105,000 a pop in OB costs......no club in SL could handle that.

Eddie Hearn who no-one in RL circles wants to touch the sport makes yet another massive deal https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/ ... eal-boxing

Eddie Hearn who no-one in RL circles wants to touch the sport makes yet another massive deal https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/ ... eal-boxing

One camera for FTA viewers.......start asking them to pay for it and you'll see where £50k comes from........and the one camera would have required 1 truck costing £22,000 for the day.......it's not a friggin phone camera

EDIT: The BBC/sky Outsource 99% of their OB work now.....I know the guy who owns one of the largest OB firms used...that's where the figures come from......Driver, crew, camera, sat-link, studio crew.......it adds up.