they have live coverage until 2021.

New deal commences from 2017


SUPER LEAGUE RUGBY

Sky Sports has been awarded a new five-year Super League deal from 2017, taking the partnership between Sky and the RFL beyond 30 years.

This new agreement will guarantee Sky Sports viewers live rugby league for at least eight more seasons and also over 100 matches a season from 2015 when a new league structure will mean coverage of matches from a 12-team Championship alongside the 12-club Super League.

Under the new deal commencing in 2017, only on Sky Sports will viewers be offered over 80 live Super League matches including Magic Weekend featuring every team, every Play-Off and the Super League Grand Final, live coverage of selected Challenge Cup matches, live coverage of Championship matches and live coverage of the World Club Challenge.

www1.skysports.com/other-sports/ ... ent-sports

www1.skysports.com/other-sports/ ... ent-sports

Well that came out if the blue. 7 years is a long time so be interesting to see what the new deal is. Maybe they offered the sports mentioned a deal they cannot refuse with BT circling.

It'll be interesting to see the figures. With BT buying up a lot of rights to events Sky have always dominated we've surely asked for a fortune?!!

Fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed. Does sound like SKY have been
Pro active now they have a rival. We still had a couple of years to run on ours. Hopefully sky have thought "with BT securing rights for premiership football, champions league football and Rugby union, they couldn't afford to lose any more sports to BT. BT can only secure rights when a contract ends, so SKY will want to tie as many sports as possible on long term deals to prevent BT bidding. But I would imagine they would have to pay big bucks to secure such long term deals. They have plenty of spare money with no champions league if premiership rugby. We would have been in a strong position so I hope we have a big contract.

The cash paid is just one element to this. I hope that there is a larger cheque in the mail to Red Hall but simply jumping into bed with BT, if they were the highest bidder, has its risks. Sky has 10.5m subscribers, BT Sport has 2m. As a sport that constantly talks about the need to expand its reach, that's a big consideration.

This deal also gives the game some security, which it sorely needs right now.

I hope that the RFL / SLE didn'y panic into a sub-optimal deal. Assuming not, this is good news. Let's hope that Sky really big up SL in a bid to compete with BT's capture of other sporting rights and SLE responds by bigger thinking. Who knows we may even get 20 odd years later to big city clubs, playing in great stadia in front of big crowds! If London got therir act together, plus Toulouse, plus Salford / Manchester (with the good doctor seemingly buying up their clubs), Leeds, etc we could see a new era, especially is Barcelona can be enlisted and Paris again.

Probably sold for chocolate covered peanuts. BT should have got it.

As well as a new contract from 2017 to 2021, the RFL has agreed a number of changes to the current deal with Sky Sports that runs to the end of the 2016 season. These include regular live action from the Kingstone Press Championship in 2015 and additional coverage of Catalan Dragons home games from 2014.



Good stuff

Very conspicuous with it's lack of figures. You'd of thought any major increase would of had them shouting from the rooftops.

My hope is they felt they set the precedent with first utilities to not announce figures, and will continue that with conviction.

My concern is they aren't that clever.

It's not an RFL announcement? Or have I missed something?

Quote: FearTheVee "It's not an RFL announcement? Or have I missed something?'" www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/29 ... e-changing?

Quote: FearTheVee "It's not an RFL announcement? Or have I missed something?'" www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/29 ... e-changing?

80 live matches in 2014 and 100 in 2015 onwards. That's good for me.

Ahhh, cheers.