You can easily preserve a decent rest period and 'block out' TV nights from the rest of the fixture list. A Sun-Thurs turnaround might be tough on teams, but you can compensate this in the following week. In an ideal world, we'd also have fewer fixtures, so you can mitigate the impact on player welfare by reducing the total number of games.

The "its easier to sell corporates" is a long-standing reasoning and I can believe it, but I don't think the benefits of that outweigh the potential devaluation of the broadcast contract by diluting our TV audience.

The other factor that comes into play is ground sharing arrangements. We all know that certain clubs (looking at you Wigan) are a pain in the when it comes to their ground arrangements, but should we be allowing clubs that have negotiated and entered into inflexible arrangements with their landlord to devalue the TV deal for the rest of the sport? I would argue not.

On the TV deal, I'd love to see us strike a deal where at least 1 game per week is on terrestrial free to air.
Sure it would impact on the total TV deal earnings, but longer term, that free to air national coverage could have a huge impact on our ability to secure top end sponsorships at whole of game, individual club level and player personal sponsorship.
Imagine if there was a game live on BBC every Sunday afternoon for instance - what other sport is ever on terrestrial tv? Hardly any nowadays - I could see it really taking off.
Also agree with the point on playing all our games when there is a match on TV, it's madness.

I know people wanna see some live coverage on FTA TV but we can't just give games away. It's up to FTA networks to put up the money and try and negotiate with sky to get a deal.

Giving away sports right cheaply is not the answer.

Are there any details of the BT/C5 deal with the Aviva? I have read that the 4 year deal to show 5 games a year is only worth £1,000,000? Surely that is very cheap? I now read that Chanel 4 will show live European Cup Rugby from next year......so yet again, we go from being the only domestic Rugby Comp on FTA in terms of the Challenge Cup, to probably having fewer games than Union next year.
I can't see BT saying to themselves, "let's give some stuff away cheap" rather I can see the IRB/RFU saying "as part of the rights deal, you will get us on Terrestrial FTA channels too........
........it works for many products to give stuff away and once it becomes popular you can charge for it, but we've already sold our game in its entirety to SKY!

Surely some free to air is needed to try and attract more interest? You only have to see the reactions after some of the BBC's sadly rare coverage to see that there are many who are surprised at the quality of the sport!

The sport needs to use it's own devices that are not covered contractually via Sky. Streaming is obviously not covered.

Here in Australia the lack of FTA coverage of RU has been a disaster for the sport. They sold everything except internationals to Fox (Sky here) and now the general awareness of RU is close to zero away from hard core fans. The local basketball competition (NBL) made the same mistake about 20 years ago by selling everything to Fox. Its now back on FTA and the awareness levels around the sport have rapidly risen.

WRT to SL, I'd say it's definitely be worth losing some headline income from Sky to get more covereage FTA. In the end it also pays for Sky, as if general awareness rises so will the value of the product.

THIS

Exactly... and we don't have to give the FTA game away, simply stipulate that 1 game must be on terrestrial, and then let that go to the highest bidder. Sky will no doubt reduce their offer for another 2 or 3 games per week, and overall I'm sure the TV deal will initially drop, but it's short term pain for long term gain. Using digital better would also help make up the shortfall.

Ultimately, we need more people watching the game to broaden our appeal to sponsors/advertisers. In terms of a TV deal helping this, FTA coverage seems the most obvious answer to me.

It's not just sponsors and advertisers, it's fans paying on the gate too.........Let's face it, we're pretty limited when it comes to attracting new fans to come to games, but get a Friday evening game Live on BBC, ITV or Channel 4 or 5 and they'll get a million + tuning in. Clever tactic would be for the RFL to run a competition during the broadcast and maybe a couple of adverts....same for SKY TV advertising their latest deal.......if people like it they'll start looking out for it.....


The cost of an outside broadcast set up is quite high. For a club to buy the equipment themselves would be insane......but to have the infrastructure put in place for an easy set up would be good....5 Cameras in set places and 2 Mobile units.......but it's still going to set you back £50,000 for the game....so you need subscribers in the thousands prepared to pay up front....and we now how free with their cash RL fans are

The NRL have the luxury of TV companies at every game, so on-selling that via NRL pass is simple......a mate of mine works in the OB business...a Premiership game runs to £105,000 a pop in OB costs......no club in SL could handle that.

Eddie Hearn who no-one in RL circles wants to touch the sport makes yet another massive deal https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/ ... eal-boxing

Eddie Hearn who no-one in RL circles wants to touch the sport makes yet another massive deal https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/ ... eal-boxing

One camera for FTA viewers.......start asking them to pay for it and you'll see where £50k comes from........and the one camera would have required 1 truck costing £22,000 for the day.......it's not a friggin phone camera

EDIT: The BBC/sky Outsource 99% of their OB work now.....I know the guy who owns one of the largest OB firms used...that's where the figures come from......Driver, crew, camera, sat-link, studio crew.......it adds up.