OFCOM's proposal to force Sky to sell its channels to other outlets, such as TopUP TV and BT is scaring the living daylights out of the RFL. www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs ... rg/RFL.pdf From a league perspective, the RFL is bob on. We're screwed if the OFCOM proposals go ahead. As, are all the minority sports that get a decent deal at the moment, such as Union and Cricket. But from a subscriber's point of view, I would like to see Sky's charges fall. I'm paying a fortune to subsidise the Premier League which doesn't interest me. I suppose the Premier League subscribers are subsidising Rugby League which doesn't interest them. The question is which side gets the better of the deal. Could League gain enough subscribers for its own channel? I'll answer my own question. Not a snowball's chance in hell. The RFL are right to be scared. These proposals have to be stopped.

OFCOM's proposal to force Sky to sell its channels to other outlets, such as TopUP TV and BT is scaring the living daylights out of the RFL. www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs ... rg/RFL.pdf From a league perspective, the RFL is bob on. We're screwed if the OFCOM proposals go ahead. As, are all the minority sports that get a decent deal at the moment, such as Union and Cricket. But from a subscriber's point of view, I would like to see Sky's charges fall. I'm paying a fortune to subsidise the Premier League which doesn't interest me. I suppose the Premier League subscribers are subsidising Rugby League which doesn't interest them. The question is which side gets the better of the deal. Could League gain enough subscribers for its own channel? I'll answer my own question. Not a snowball's chance in hell. The RFL are right to be scared. These proposals have to be stopped.

I wish OFCOM every success, go get em boys.

That wont go ahead, sport england will probably step in and do something and claim they are damaging the grass roots of the sport.

Makes for good thinking thought, if sky for some reason did pull the money, where would we be?? Probably not in a good place....

It does make you realise that we were lucky that we didn't seek a deal with Setanta the last time round. Like you say, we'd have been in a real crisis. As it is, we have most of our financial eggs in the Sky basket.

As a sport we most certainly do. I think there is probably only about 5 clubs who could stay at the same level if the sky money was pulled.

It will create a level playing field that the best clubs will flourish in instead of this fantasyland sport we now have, please let it happen.

Without the Sky money Rugby League would no longer be a professional sport. Several of the teams in SL would go out of business completely including some of the big names and the entire sport would be forced to cut costs drastically. The NL would become even more irrelevant as they wouldn't get any money either.

The end of the Sky deal is pretty much doomsday.

I agree with your sentiment, but ofcom really do need to do something about the current operation of Sky in being both content and delivery provider and not operating under 'fair' terms. It's exactly the same as BT were forced to separate parts of their business and provide wholesale offerings to other operators at fixed prices (and the same prices they were then forced to charge other parts of BT). The resultant changes worked well in the Telecoms industry.

It's not out of the question for this to actually be beneficial to Sky in the long run, as it's trying to make their content available to a wider audience at a fair rate - which could result in them making more than they do now, and give them more money to invest in sports for example.

To be honest the whole letter reads to me like somebody who is 'concerned of acacia avenue' expressing his views on a company not being allowed to do something - the same company that pays his salary.

The RFL's main areas of concern about wholesale offerings dissuading new entrants to do things themselves actually had the opposite effect in Telecoms, it allowed companies to establish a foothold and brand by wholesaling, then developing and delivering the services themselves later. A more valid point is their fear of things being moved to Sky 3 or Sky Sports xtra to keep them from being wholesaled - now that I do agree on, and feel either all Sky's channels need to be available wholesale or non at all.

Maybe not!
I remember a conversation with a Hull FC director who put forward a diferent senario at the time of our move to summer. His theory was that if we had one live match & one recorded highlights programe per week shown on BBC sport the revenue value to sponsors would increase the clubs income from sponsorship & we would not need The sky money. He actualy sugested getting the BBC to take it for nothing as long as we got the same coverage as SKY give the super league as the number of potential viewers nation wide makes SKY viewing figures look tiny.
But It would take a brave man to try that.

why would they want to invest more money in sports?

The problem is, built into the price Sky pay is a premium for their content to be exclusive, this is how they get subscriptions, if they lose this exclusivity of this content, then they wont pay that premium and as such the value of the rights will drop

But that would only apply to the clubs featured , so the big clubs , the ones on the TV all the time would grow strong , but the rest would suffer badly

Just as when Wigan were the only club who could afford to go full time & dam near killed the game off? We are still not recovered from the damage that period did to our game. HKR are just recovering from that time we lost our ground & went bust trying to get back to the top Widness have been through similar experiances. Bad as it is now it is preferable to the farce we had in the 1980's

We dont have much to lose anyway , so the loss of SKY would have little to no effect on the clubs outside SL , personally I doubt the value of the TV coverage that we currently get

The RFL have to be in charge of the alocation of games on a fair basis & gate revenues would have to be shared out from a central pot. Also the salary cap has to stay.

You're looking at it purely from Sky as one entity (content+delivery company) what ofcom are proposing would still allow Sky to be an exclusive content provider, just make them offer the content to other delivery providers at a fixed fair cost (it would still be Sky branded content).

BT had to do exactly the same thing in reverse - it owned at the time the only delivery platform (and still the largest by far until we see how LTE takes off in this country next year), and was forced to wholesale the delivery to other content providers. It's just the other side of the same coin and the way competition laws work.