Quote: Call Me God "The BBC made most of their Outside Broadcast staff redundant about a decade ago and contract out all major Outside Broadcast events like Wimbledon, FA cup, Challenge Cup and the 6 Nations.
The set-up at an OB usually involves a command truck worth about £4,000,000 and costing £10,000 a day to hire, a team of self employed contracted 6 riggers/runners, 6 cameras (minimum) and another Transport vehicle as well as Camera operators, producers, directors, presenters, commentators normally BBC employees. If the game involves the crew driving from London, then 1 game takes a minimum of 2 days and an overnight stay.
Knowing how much a driver/rigger get's paid, I would estimate the cost of putting on a Live game as between £65,000 and £75,000........so 2 games a week will run the BBC £3,500,000 or so over the season and that's for a pretty basic set up......
...the question needs to be asked if the RFL were to offer to bankroll this themselves for 3 seasons, would the increased exposure help the game and would the increased exposure attract a big name sponsor to cover the costs through naming rights?
IF....and it's a BIG IF.......we were to get 1,000,000 a game, then that would be essentially 69,000,000 sets of eyeballs over 3 years for £10,000,000.......I am a risk averse person by nature, but I reckon the games got more to lose by not trying something like this.....if sky come back with less money and more conditions in a few years time, I'd let them keep SL, but not the rights to the championship......'"
100% agreed. Though my preference would be for a halfway house - 3 televised games per week, 2 on Sky (or.another subsricption service) 1 on FTA. Sky get 1st pick each week, FTA get 2nd pick, Sky get 3rd pick. Would see a short term reduction in revenue from broadcast deal, but would hopefully have a long term benefit. Super league key well still have to subsidise the footage on FTA, or come up with a clever deal with a production company, maybe for a free 4th pick per week?