Also we had 3 other Friday night games up against the live Sky game last week, why do Sky put up with it, and more to the point why don't the RFL realise they are knocking up to 30,000 off their own viewing figuers, the very viewing figuers that will help determine the next Sky deal for RL. Doh!!!

With the advent of skyplus and those old fashioned things... a video recorder, many people who go to a non televised Friday night game still get a chance to see the Sky game in their own time and not one dictated to them.

Do recorded games count on the Live viewing figures?? A lot of people like myself watch the match at the Pub/Club as I haven't got Sky.

moving the friday live game to sunday would probably be a better option, but SKY devote sunday to football, and I don't think they'd like to show RL on a regular basis in that slot.

the clubs who have chosen to play on friday nights such as ourselves have done so due to the extra corporate takings they can make (corporates prefer to entertain guests after work on a friday, not waste a day of their weekend 'working') and Hull charge at least £65 for a coporate seat which is 3 times as much as a standard seat...so we're not going to turn that revenue stream down. The fact we are one of the very few SL clubs making a profit shows we have got the decision right.

not as such. The way the viewing figures work is that a 1000 or so people are selected to have a BARB box, which records their tv viewing (and they also have to select how many people in the room are viewing on their remotes etc)

those 1000 or so peoples data is then multiplied to give a figure for the whole population. And this is given as a 'overnight' viewing figure.

then a few weeks later the people who recorded the programmes data is included, and this is given in the 'official' viewing figure.

so somebody viewing without being one of the chosen few to have a BARB box doesn't make a difference to the viewing figure.

The fact Hull made a profit is based on many decisions, some of which will contribute to profit some of which won't. The net result being that a profit was made but that in itself does not necessarily mean the decision to play on Friday nights was right.

If Sky want us to not play any other games during their televised games then they're going to have to up their offer to make up the deficit of the potential money that clubs moving their games could lose. Is the few thousand extra fans watching each week worth much more money to them in terms of advertising, etc? I don't know.

If they up their offer on the condition that all clubs play on a Sunday at 3pm, we could even have our own "Super League Sunday" style programme like Soccer Saturday. Add all the Championship clubs in there and it would be a good 2 hours of coverage there. Mind you, saying that, they'd try and get Eddie Hemmings to do Jeff Stelling's job which he'd never be able to do!

For some of us the Sunday tradition is long, long gone. At Wigan this is our 10th year of Friday Night games and it is the tradition now.

At the time, it all came down to selling season tickets and Sky's decision to switch from televising on Sunday Nights at 6:30pm (as they had done from 1997 to 2000) back to Saturday's. Fans wouldn't buy season tickets because with Sky shifting almost half of our league games fans never knew when games would be played.

Based on the Wigan games Sky showed in 2001, had we stayed on Sundays at 3pm that year, six of the 14 home league games would have been shifted away for tv. As it turned out by switching to Friday's none of the home games were altered from the original fixture list - they all got played tv or not on Friday's.

Thus the more consistent fixture list saw a massive rise in attendances.
Hard to imagine now but in 2001 we Wigan were getting home crowd figures at the JJB of 7772, 8282, 7413, 8085, 8400.
But because season tickets began to rise after the switch we haven't had a sub 10,000 league attendance at JJB Stadium since July 2005 (only us and Leeds can boast that).

Wigan were getting those shocking home crowds in 2001 despite them on the field fighting right at the top of the table (finished top 2000 & joint top 2001) - whereas in 2005/2006 when crowds were higher we were near to rock bottom. Proving by the way we don't suffer from glory hunting syndrome at Wigan! We misery hunt!

So clearly for Wigan it has proved to be a succesful move. I must admit I do get annoyed sometimes to miss big games on tv being at a match, and also making the M62 trip on a Friday can be a nightmare, but it is better to have a more consistent fixture list I think.

Can understand the original posters point but surely increased attendances offsets the loss of tv money? Suppose it is a bit of a catch 22 situation.

I can empathise with clubs wanting to make a profit but when the next Sky deal is up for grabs a/ the ecomonic situation will be nowhere near what it was with much less money floating about, b/ Ad revenue is massively down for All TV companies in the last 12 months and ad revenue is the yardstick by which commercial TV companies live and die by, ad revenue is based on Peak Viewing time and viewing figures so we could be seriously undermining our games future value and future finances by compromising the friday night live games, especially if recorded figuers don't count. I think we could be crippling our games future by allowing the Friday night game to be continually compromised.

I've always been surprised by the teams who prefer Friday night games when they are not SKY-enforced. Surely less away fans travel on a Friday night after a hard week at work, contending with Friday traffic and arriving home very late at night.
Surely Sunday at 3.00ish allows away suppoerters to travel more flexibly and be home at a decent hour? I know I enjoy an away game as my main Sunday activity, but to be honest I'm usually too knackered to travel far on a Friday night.

I don't finish work while 18.30hrs Friday so it rules out any away games.

barely any teams bring an away following worth bothering about the KC. The diehards that do travel will come whether its a friday night or sunday.

sure it annoying that I probably won't be able to get to Wigan on friday for a game that could see us go top of SL, but i completely understand why Wigan choose that time to play their games.

I think Hull having the leagues most expensive away end ticket prices has something to do with that. They charge £5 more than Wigan.

Its hardly affecting viewing figures much, when you consider only around 40k people will watch the games live at the ground on a friday.

Of those 40k how many have Sky?
Probably only a fraction

Then you have to factor in that many fans just would not be interested in watching a TV game between two teams they dont support.

So we are probably only talking about viewing figures taking a hit of a few thousand viewers.
Hardly important when games are drawing 250k+ viewers