Ive said for a couple of years now, the RFL should be getting into Amazons ribs now in anticipation for the 2021 deal. Sports steaming is the future, Sky will attempt to combat it, as will BT Sports et all but will fail.

Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter will take over in the coming years.

What RU and cricket do much better than RL is the selling of their event games- whether it's the Six Nations, 20-20, Test Matches or Saracens at Wembley Stadium etc.

Each of these generates a huge income and interest, whilst their domestic weekly games plod on by in a not too dissimilar manner to RL.

Meanwhile RL struggles to sell out CC Semi Finals, Magic Weekend, Big Bash and IRL matches.

The arrival of Toronto and Toulouse into Super League in the one year would change rugby league's profile enormously, in a positive manner.
That is why we must all pray for Toronto and Toulouse's promotion. London's promotion would also help.

But they sell those well because they’ve put the time and effort into building them up and not just suddenly expecting them to sell out by putting an advert on their website.

They’ve put the games on in the same place at the same time (roughly) year after year and built continuity and made them days out.

We never know when England RL are playing or where it will be. The Magic Weekend is tragically under-promoted both inside the sport and outside. We should be saying it’s staying in Newcastle for the next 5 years and then offering Newcastle United season ticket holders half price tickets (along with getting their details). We should be taking an England RL game there to bolster our presence in the city and at any and all RL events the Newcastle RL team should be present and advertised and marketed to high heaven.
The Cup Final should be the same for London. Why haven’t we been marketing directly to Spurs fans whilst they’re at Wembley? Why aren’t London Broncos advertised at the Cup Final?

We have some good ideas and do some good things in RL but nothing is ever joined up or done with any confidence or continuity.

The ignorance of the London based sports fan was brought home to me a few years ago. There I was with my mates resplendent in our primrose and blue when one of the locals enquired as to whether we were there to support the Swedish football team. Argh.

The arrogance of a fan from a northern pit village is on display here....it could just have easily been Ukraine

Here's some arrogance from a northern mill town (old) boy, who says that Toronto will have a big wake-up call a week on Sunday when the next set of part-timers send them scuttling home without any points.

I realise that I could very easily come unstuck with that comment, but I'll just do what JC & co do and ignore the responses, and just say that Toulouse are due a big wake-up call the next weekend when Fax come calling...

Who wouldn't swap those 3 for Salford, Widnes & Hull KR ?

Well, the fans of those clubs for starters!
If someone goes down then it will be on merit, the same if someone goes up. The beauty of the Qualifiers 2018 is it really is too tough to call......but I'l stick my neck out and say if Widnes don;t win their first game, they won't win any!

"Gutterfax/Call Me God" has a chronic problem with spelling common English words.

No doubt the huge streaming companies are going to get rights for PL + CL football sooner rather than later. Where does that leave Sky/BT? And more importantly - where does that leave RL?

Would Sky pump more money into the game? Try and make it grow into a much better product?
Would BT make a bid for RL to try + do the same?

Amazon already have a rights deal with the Premier League from next season, with two rounds of ten matches over bank holiday weekends and it has held rights for Thursday night NFL games and WTA tennis. Netflix doesn't seem overly interested in sport, instead building its business around original content.

Personally I wouldn't bet the farm on a big-money offer from Amazon just yet. They're clearly testing the water with sports rights and I suspect they are a pretty major loss-leader to drive subscriptions for Prime. If that is their aim, then what they need is mass appeal - not content that has limited regional appeal. The rights that they have bought also come with relatively low production costs - they have largely just been simulasting existing TV feeds, rather than doing their own OB and presenting.

Both Sky and BT have flogged as much kit as they can though association with various sports. I don't foresee much in the way of involvement in future bidding wars by either company.

Maybe Bazza, but in this instance he knew exactly what he was typing