Sod Ladbrokes.
The RFL should be all over this like bees on Honey.
Friday May 1st...120 days to go until the 120th anniversary of TGG. Get your CC Final tickets now and be in with a chance to win a Box for you and 4 Friends at the 1st Kiwis Test in October....put a countdown clock on the RFL site.
Synergies like this are a marketing persons wet dream.

Supposedly worth £1m per season. Pretty good in my book. To give some context the FA cup is likely to run without a principal sponsor this year; the previous deal was worth £8m per year.

Good sponsorship deal if the alleged £1 million per season is correct.

A 3 year deal from 2015 to 2017 whilst the CC is still broadcast on terrestrial BBC makes sense.

Such a shame that this historically significant and prestigious cup competition which has been treated with such indifference and contempt during the SL-era will soon belong to Sky from 2018 onwards

When Sky take on the Challenge cup, the sport needs to work with them so that both Sky and RL get the best out of the deal.
Let's hope that Big Nige and his band of merry men are already working along these lines, if not the Cup will disappear into total obscurity.

Lets face it, it was the move to summer rugby that knackered most of the kudos of the cup, which like the FA cup, was always the last event of the regular season and a celebration of the sport.

There needs to be a way of re creating the "special" feel of the competition and we should bang the drum as loudly as possible to promote heritage of RL's oldest trophy.

At best 1/10th of those who watched on the bbc will be watch on Sky. Taking the challenge cup and internationals from the bbc is an absolute disaster and a stupid short term is decision.

The first round draw takes place at Wembley Stadium and will involve 40 teams from Aberdeen to London, students, police and the armed forces. In some ways this is the most exciting part of the CC - the start of the Road to Wembley! I know they're all amateur outfits but a half decent marketing team should be able to make something of it. I haven't heard anything about it, nothing on the BBC website for instance. Bit late now, it's scheduled for 12:45 tomorrow!

Absolutely spot on.

Can you see Sky dedicating a traditional Saturday afternoon date to the Wembley CC Final event?

I can't.

It'll be shunted to a Thursday night, or at best a Saturday or Sunday slot with a kick off around 6pm with just a paltry 100k converted moonies tuning into the ghetto of Sky Sports 3 or 4.

It's a disaster in the making and I don't believe it's an exaggeration to envisage the termination of the competition within a few years of Sky's less-than-enthusiastic coverage.

The haste with which the latest TV deal was signed last year was utterly obscene.

My guess is that the RFL will do so regardless. Whether Sky choose to screen it is a separate issue but to be honest whether they do or whether they don't matters little. In fact a refusal to do so might well deliver a boost to the gate while having a negligible impact on the cup's future profile.

Have missed something, or isn't the CC Final still classified as a protected event?

Yeah just the final though.

So RL to the masses is just about finished



Although the RFL pretend that we are in rude health, the reality is more like an ice cube in a tea pot.

Well big Nige needed something quick to push through his idiotic 3x8 system, a new TV deal and 300k advance is apparently all it took. There will be about 5 RL matches on terrestrial tv during the next tv contract.