Sky losing midweek football is not enough on it's own to effect us (a weekend sport) IMO - Be interesting to see how they react though.

The Super League highlights program is on at 1:30pm on a Monday or Tuesday on BBC2, has been all last season, nationally..
Could be better but far improved than the 2am slot it had down here previously

That though is also the position of BT, particularly at this embryonic stage of the channel.. Much depends on how 'big' they view RL as to how much value they are likely to put on the RL viewers and the value of the wider collateral benefits they might bring. To be honest it leaves us in very choppy waters imo.

Sky are moving away from live sport and spending more on original comedy and drama.

The likelihood is that they won't put up too much of a struggle to keep hold of anything other than their crown jewel events (Premier League football and international cricket).

There's certainly no chance they would want to get into a bidding war to keep hold of SL rights if BT Sport did come knocking, so there's little chance of the RFL being able to turn it into an auction to get more money from the highest bidder.

As usual, the loser in all this is the viewer, who ends up having to spend more money to follow any sports they are interested in.

Am I the only one who seriously wishes EVERY sports programme was a pay-per-view event, and so could actually pick what individual events I wanted to watch, rather than pay for a whole package and have sports I have no interest in (Golf and Darts being two off the top of my head)?

Think when the next round of bids come in we could potentially have four bidders for SL. Premier Sports, ITV, BT & Sky sports. Could be very interesting.

Sky have literally nothing to show on most Tuesdays and Wednesdays now especially as you are not allowed to schedule domestic football on the same night as European football.

Expect midweek Super League to fill that void simply because there is very little else that could.

Sky have literally nothing to show on most Tuesdays and Wednesdays now especially as you are not allowed to schedule domestic football on the same night as European football.

Expect midweek Super League to fill that void simply because there is very little else that could.

Thursday night SL, monday night SL, we already are doing that, pretty much.

If you have a decent PC and a reasonable internet connection, there is absolutely no need to subscribe to multiple live sports channels any more.

Plenty of reliable live streams of events out there online, you can watch anything that might be on ESPN, Premier or BT Sport without a subscription.

The Champions League deal will be great news for the Football League, as Sky will most likely use this (if anything) to fill the gap. Football League games happen on Champions League match nights anyway, so it is an easy option for both Sky and the FL.

I don't know where people have got this idea that ITV have suddenly gained an interest in rugby league. They've not shown any interest previously.

Nice legal suggestion there: Andy

If anything, ITV will look to squander their millions on Aviva Premiership games given that they already have the highlights.

Next bidding war will be in the Union. If Sky lose Union then it will be interesting to see if they hold on to league by pumping money in; or whether they'll just try and blow competition out the water by offering a ridiculous TV deal to other sports to try and keep a stranglehold on their rights.

I'd quite like BT to put in a bid, just to drive up the price even if they have no real interest in the rights.

Would it be worth the RFL splitting up games into blocks like the Premier League do with their TV rights? Get individual networks bidding on packages. Split up all the big games and mix them in with some less attractive games to make all packages worth bidding for and one play-off game, then have one specifically for derby games, then have one for Magic Weekend games.

Fully - this is where the RFL need some real commercial grunt in the negotiation process. It won't make much difference if nobody wants SL, but packaging up the offering to TV channels correctly can make a big difference when there's the slightest competition.

I'd also be looking at leveraging into Australian free-to-air for full SL games. 7mate has been showing the WC here - and doing a pretty good job. If SL could get shown FTA, even at night, it would be worth far more than if its on Fox as a filler.