Would anyone like to point me to a sport in the UK that has live coverage of its regular season on free to air TV?

The BBC has a handful of live FA Cup games a season in football. Otherwise, that's it. The Premier League, Football League, Conference and SPL are all on pay TV. Cricket's Championship, T20 and limited overs competitions are on pay TV. Rugby Union's Premiership and Pro 12 are on pay TV.

Free to air TV in the UK has absolutely zero interest in showing regular league games in any sport. Anyone expecting the RFL to magically find a FTA broadcaster to take live SL coverage is talking absolute nonsense.

Absolutely correct.

As the Challenge Cup is no longer a protected sporting event(s), it had to be sold somewhere but, it is indeed short sighted not to take a lower bid from FTA.
Having said that, with the new "every second counts" structure, expansion is out of the window so we may as well insulate ourselves further and enjoy life in our own shrinking bubble and in 10 years time, we can all complain that the game has shrunk even further.

Complete rubbish and you know it. Sky didn't and won't bother until they have the final.




Go on then, tell us who's got TV rights for internationals in the next 5-10 years?



What, being the 2nd or 3rd most watched weekly sport on the country's biggest sports channel?

It could be worse, the Super League could be the Aviva Premiership on the ghetto, which is BT Sport William Eve.

William Eve is spot on, the RFL were too hasty with their SKY deal. When you look at how many people in the UK physically sit down and watch Aviva rugby every week on TV, be it live or highlights, it easily beats Super Leagues figures because its shown on BT and ITV/ITV4.

The BT numbers for RU aren't nothing to write home about and anybody who thinks ITV would be interested in SL must be taking some pretty strong drugs. On Sky we get 2 live games (sometimes 3 with the Catalans home games) along with the shows like Boots n All. To lose that for one live game on ITV4 and a highlights show tucked away more obscure to find than the current BBC SL show would be daft.

Maybe the RFL could've gone chasing the dream of offers from other channels......and maybe when ITV, BBC turned around and said no thanks then Sky would've offered less with the knowledge that the RFL had no other good options.

Hi William

Although the game has probably got more in terms of hard cash from Sky, we now have all our eggs in 1 basket and IMO, we would have been better off with the CC shown on a terrestrial channel.

A couple of hundred thousand viewers on Sky is not exactly appealing to the masses.

Hi Richard

Didn't soccer grow crowds again last season to nrl levels?

I have no idea what the viewing figures are for the highlights of the 2 leagues.
But for the live games SL gets roughly 30% higher viewing figures than the AP.

, s
That may or may not be true, my point was that the Aviva rugby is seen by many more people each week on TV than Superleague is. If you're trying to sell your product, surely you want as many people as possible to see your product?

I know you're a troll so I shouldn't respond, but you have the viewing figures for the SL Show vs the RU highlights package I assume? Even though it is ghettoised in most of the country, the SL show still gets very reasonable figures in the north of England so there is little reason to think the RU equivalent, shown at similar time slots, would be significantly more popular.

How do you know that the AP is seen by many more people each week on TV if you don't know what the viewing figures are?

If you do know what the viewing figures are then why are you pretending you don't know them?

The only broadcaster in the UK for whom audience figures carry little weight is the BBC. It has a certain "guaranteed" income plus anything extra it gets via programme sales and merchendising etc.
All the rest rely on advertising and/or subscription charges.
To that end the rate card and socio-economic groups come to the fore allied to viewing figures.
If you look at the advertising during programmes you will see who the advertisers are aiming at. Although not an exact science it is pretty well on the mark regarding interest and returns.
If you look at the adverts say in Skys coverage of RU and SL I would suggest the mix maybe somewhat different ,although Sky seem to believe that RU interests most RL followers and vice versa. The rate cards will be different even if the same advert is shown. Take for example a Range Rover, it might be of interest to some followers of RL but outside the financial range of most , but probably within the range of most who would follow Union. The advertising rate would be dictated by potential returns so even if the audience for League exceeds union by double, the actual return could be less for the advertiser but the rate paid less than for advertising for a bigger market share for them in the Union slot.
Also note that Premier Sports shuts down on Saturday afternoons whilst Mo & Ron Balls game is on. They know they will not get an audience at all so no advertiser will pay either.
So whilst audience figures matter, they are only a part of the story. Just think that the NFL can fill Wembley and Sky promote the game to the hilt along with C4 but what is the advertising rate and who actually advertises? IMO it's a rubbish game to watch in its current form but then a sport that has to tell the audience what is happening each time is hitting it's socio-economic groups quite well I would suggest.