My dream setup would be:

Premium Games major platform 2/week
1 other game/week on Free To Air (FTA)

Online Subscription Service £150/season upfront or £15/month
All games shown live and on-demand (including a timeline to skip to tries and big hits etc), pre/post match analysis, past seasons games, and highlights.

Weekly program to include highlights of games played that week on FTA

Weekly program of just tries and big hits on FTA/Major Platform

Where are all the subscribers willing to fork out £150 going to come from? I've watched the game for 40 years+, including a ST for most of those, but I wouldn't contemplate spending an extra £150 on top of what I already pay to watch sport on TV. Having cameras at every SL game would cost the TV company a fortune, and subscription numbers would need to be enormous to make it a viable proposition.

The Sky deal is actually pretty generous, and we may get stung when it comes round for renewal. That said, if Sky have the money to spend, they may take the view that a reduced deal would impact the game to an extent that it would kill the game at a full-time level without their contribution.

That said, it would be good to have a FTA deal that allowed for some SL and Championship games to be aired live, as well as a proper highlights show at a reasonable time. If the deal was brokered correctly, then it may well be in Sky's interest to support this, as FTA coverage might just encourage a few more folk to watch the subscription games on SKy Sports?

Alternatively Sky need to realise that a lot of revenue could be raised through PPV super league games. Because at the end of the day £30/month + is a lot to pay for Sky Sports if you only intend to watch Rugby League. Whereas £3.5-£5 is reasonable to pay if you can't get to the match or want to watch a big game that doesn't include your team!

You have NowTV which allows you to subscribe to Sky Sports for something like £7 a day, but you're not going to get them offering PPV games over their established platform. Sky's business model relies on the 'bundling up' of services. You can't just subscribe to Sky Sports - you have to take on a whole additional channel package to access the sports content.

I paid for watchnrl and it's great value. All 8 games on a weekend and RL related shows available on demand. Not sure I'd be willing to watch all 6 SL games though. Also can't imagine The Late Show with Phil Clarke (with Barry and Tez) instead of Matty Johns with Fletch and Hindy!

Well Bradford's streaming of home and away games for free hasn't hurt their crowds. In fact, there's been talk from some lapsed fans on social media than what they've seen shown on the stream has encouraged them to head back to Odsal.

And old Mick's claiming viewing figures of over 150,000

I don't do SKY, never have, I've paid for my own clubs matches on subscription but gave it up as the quality was poor and the website absolute garbage.
However I would pay £150 for a rugby league package that I could access anywhere.

To suggest the SKY package is generous fails to grasp how much it aids SKY to get revenue from punters they would simply not get at all, not to mention that it's peanuts compared to other sports with less numbers. RL for SKY offers a fantastic deal for them, not the other way around.


As for promoting the sport to areas with a higher hrade deomgraphic, well RFL weren't really committed to that, London they did next to feck all to support it and basically wandered off from the South as a whole despite the fact international games get a lot of tickets sold from the Southern regions.
I was reading about how Barry Hearn has massively expanded snooker over the last few years and the money now for the WC is £2M just for that one tournament the winner this year gets £425k, it's going up to £500k according to Hearn by 2020.

He's managed to tap into other markets and increased the popularity of the sport and has tournaments on many different platforms/channels. The money for the WC had dropped 60% from early 2000s and on a downward trend, it's gone fro a low of £890k total to the £2M in 10 years. Maybe getting the son on board isn't such a bad idea!

RL is worth more than it's costing SKY but the RFL have short changed it and even devalued it far too often including the headline SL sponsor, I don;t expect a better deal and RFL will no doubt simply go with what they think is the safe.easy option so they don't have to actually do anything. It's that laziness/ineptitude that has seen the game go backwards

In a nutshell...THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Unfortunately for us, the problem now is that we've been overtaken by Union in terms of viewers and darts and WWE pull in comparable viewing figures, so next time around we will need to negotiate harder and not just roll over........regardless of if the money is less or more, we need to demand more games, championship games, more FTA coverage and nationally at sensible times......and the clubs, not just the RFL/SL Board need to do more to get punters back through the gates.......
......alas, it'll be the top 12 dictating what's what and so long as they ring fence their 2 mill a year each they won't care about the rest.....

Actually, maybe not rlLack of support for SLrl

I reckon what they want they will do......and until toronto arrive with a big fat cheque for gazzillions in TV cash I'd treat them the same way we did crusaders/London/PSG.......still tickets available on-line for this weeks game in a 3k stadium trying to pack in 7k "live action starved fans".................

Haven't the last few TV deals been negotiated on behalf of the RFL by IMG? These guys aren't idiots by any stretch of the imagination.

In any case, I think it's wrong to assume that our TV deal is a result of the RFL "not negotiating hard enough" and I think that if we're going into negotiations for the new deal offering the same as what we have now, it's not going to end well. Sky know exactly what we bring to them in terms of monetary value, and the onus is on the sport to maximise that value.

Why would Sky pay more when the top talent is playing in another competition? Why would Sky pay more when we seem to be the only sport that seems to willingly dilute our own TV audience every Friday? Why would Sky pay more in a climate where new advertising technologies means that the advertising slots around RL content are going to become less valuable against other sports?

RL fans seem to like lazy answers and like "reserve teams" and "Eddie Hearn", the "The RFL doesn't negotiate hard enough with Sky" is another one. Broadcasters and sponsors expect more - and the sport needs to offer it.

Excellent point.

Premier League matches while the majority kick off at 15:00 they have ONE at 12:30, ONE at 17:30, then sometimes TWO at 13:30 on the Sunday and ONE at 16:00, then ONE on Monday night.

Almost all the televised games are at a time when no other games are being played! Other than the very few times a season there are midweek league fixtures.

Even the people who go to the 15:00 games get to watch the 12:30 and 17:30 ones in the pub before and after.