We'll probably have to agree to disagree on the word "major". For most people watching the BBC, this event simply doesn't register.

The average attendance at the last World Cup in Australia was 16,000 - less than the average attendance watching League 1 football at Portsmouth FC so far this season.

I do love Attenborough, have most of the boxsets, plus sea creatures are my favourite animals, especially cephalopods.

On the subject of rugby league coverage, I haven't even seen an advert for it yet on the BBC. Decent enough coverage on their website and I have found my new favourite hobby, reading the comments sections on BBC RL articles, the union trolls on there are hilarious!

Are the BBC going to show Blue Planet on a Friday morning when everyone is at work?

Absolutely can’t wait for the new Blue Planet

Regards

King James

Whilst I agree that RL is often short-changed in terms of media coverage, if we want to improve it we have to make the sport more relevant to more people.

We are a relatively niche sport that is watched by a small number of people and played by a tiny amount.

We need to drastically increase the amount of people involved in the sport. The amateur game fails dramatically in this regard and we need to find ways of getting more people involved.

Unless you live in Hull, West Yorkshire or parts of Lancashire/Cheshire it’s difficult to watch our sport live and even if you do live there it’s not easy to take part in our sport.

We put significant regional and social barriers up to people who may get into our sport. We need to remove these and then more people will be interested in RL and the media exposure will increase.

TaDa........we have a winner.
200k on SKY watching and less than 10% of a soccer-football Audience on FTA and still we whine and moan about people not bothering to watch us......the BBC will syndicate Blue Planet and make more from domestic DVD sales than RLWC 2017 cost them........it is up to the sports governing body to get us noticed...no more "it's not fair'....."It's the BBC/Public School" crap.....social media is our route to an audience....we need to out kardashian the Kardashians.....not wallow in our misery.
Even the NRL didn't fully leverage the Burgess Bros thing........if the RFL/NRL had pitched that to a production co promising 1 million viewers to start with it would have made C4 at worst.

Perhaps you might live near Wrexham, Bridgend/Llanelli/Merthyr, Cheltenham/Gloucester, London, Hemel, Coventry, Oxford or Newcastle ?

It always amazes me the amount of marketing experts we have on here. I don't know what the situation is with funding etc or who is in charge of it but I'd guess the budget is very small relative to the demographic and the viewing figures, and to produce high quality advertising you generally need alot of money behind it.

Whilst I agree, I think the assumed lack of any clear advertising/marketing campaign to promote a major international competition, which occurs just once every 4 years, makes people wonder just what the "powers that be" (whether that be RFL, IRLF, NRL or broadcast partners) have been doing.

Considering that the RLWC has been around since 1954 then its somewhat galling the amount of promo that the RUWC, formed in 1987, gets.

Don't know what all the fuss is about.
Attenborough needs to bow out like Stevo.
Lebanon v France was miles better.

Was a good programme. Good work, Dave.

The RLWC has had more media mentions over the weekend, thanks to the alleged indiscretions of George Riley, who was to anchor the coverage on 5Live, but has since been suspended from the BBC...

The BBC and sport coverage is generally poor. The recent USPGA golf was bought by the beeb who then decided to stick it on the red button only, dreadful coverage of what is classed as a major sporting event.

Sky has its critics but they do a miles better job of broadcasting sports than the beeb and itv will ever do.

The BBC didn't seem to have too much of an issue with shifting their schedule around to give live coverage of an U17 World Cup football final. Yet other sports, as you've said, don't get the same sort of treatment.