Is the England v Italy game on TV on saturday?

No, it's not being televised.

Sky currently hold the rights to broadcast England games (apart from the RLWC) and they are not interested. Blackpool V Wigan in the Championship and Cardiff V Toulon in the Heineken Cup is more important to them.

Sky weren't interested in the RLWC so they certainly won't be interested in a RLWC warm-up fixture.

Not true. Sky put in a bid to broadcast the competition. The rights agency thought it could do better and went elsewhere, realised the offer Sky had made was actually pretty good and went back grovelling, naturally they were told where to go.

Thanks for confirmation that Sky weren't interested in the RLWC the last time they were offered the broadcasting rights. In fact, rlSky aren't interested in televising international RL for the next four years either, along with the RLWC in 2017rl.

another genius decision by the organisers to take the easy option and the quick cash from IMG whilst relinquishing any say in where the games would be shown.....for all the talk of on-line media players, Rileys snooker halls and 2 month subscription deals, Premier Sports is an access TV set up and the fact remains that regardless of the SKY offer, it should have been accepted, because if you are a sports fans watching SKY between now and Nov 30th, I doubt you'd know there was a RLWC on.....and spots fans are the people we should be targeting (see ITV advert thread)!

Looks like Cook Islands v New Zealand is on Premier next Sunday Afternoon from 2:45pm.

Would sky have shown every game like premier? No doubt they also wanted exclusive rights to the England games as well, leaving only highlights on the BBC.

I would say we have done well with 6 consecutive weekends of RL on free to air tv on the horizon.

It's not a bad deal if the BBC highlights packages are shown nationally and with regularity at a decent timeslot.

Sadly I doubt this will be the case and we'll probably end up with a weekly highlights package broadcast at 4AM in Yorkshire only.

Yes I would agree that there also needs to be a decent highlights package to go along with the BBC coverage.

IIRC the BBC and SKY shared the TV rights in 2008...."SOME" England games were on FTA.


It is great news and it is a comfort to know that the 6 games the BBC show will be the best attended too.....but SKY losing the RLWC and the one in 2017 does not bode well for their on-going relationship with the RFL.....but that's a different discussion altogether.

This does annoy me with the SL show. It's not as if there is something important or something that is being shown for the first time. It's usually a Graham Norton re-run!

it's part of the paid RFU/IRB conspiracy apparently

Sky didn’t want to share the rights with the BBC, the unfortunate fact is that when you strip England out of the comp, the WC isn’t all that attractive to a pay TV provider. Having FTA Coverage of the big games is more important than having the none-england games on Sky rather than Premier Sports.

We also have the guarantee of international RL on the BBC in 2014, 2016, and 2017 at least. So over the next 5 years we have FTA Broadcast of RL in 4 of them. That is brilliant, its an unbridled positive. Yet the same faces choose to see this as Sky playing down interest in International RL rather than the BBC increasing it.

On a postive note, at least the BBC have been giving the Super League Show an nationwide broadcast slot this year too, albeit in mid afternoon on a Tuesday on BBC 2, which is giving it slightly better coverage than just the late night regional showings on BBC1.

The SL Play-Off games even got a reasonable timeslot on a Sunday afternoon.