It shows the importance of getting a decent amount of FTA coverage for any sport if you want it to become part of the public conciseness. Wales v SA in a "friendly" should be blown off the ratings by England playing anyone at any sport....but because RL is confined to Pay TV and is considered a northern hobby, it struggles to grasp the attention of the public and the media.
Pipe dreams of TV deals with ITV are all well and good, but in reality, I suspect the best way forward is negotiation with SKY AND A FTA PARTNER with a view to having 1 game a week on FTA. SKY get an average of about 130,000 for a SL game across the season and a quick glance shows that the BBC/ITV digital channels get about 500k for their programmes....for SL to be of interest to these channels then they would need to get 500k figures week in week out to be worth any "investment" on their part.

I suspect the TV money from SKY won't increase too much next time, so maybe the 1 FTA game a week needs to be a bargaining chip.....

Anyone who's up is in for a treat, someone changed EVERY mention of Rugby World Cup on the 2015RWC page to Rugby UNION World Cup. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup#Bids

Anyone who's up is in for a treat, someone changed EVERY mention of Rugby World Cup on the 2015RWC page to Rugby UNION World Cup. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup#Bids

Article on the strong viewing figures for England gameshttp://www.rlwc2013.com/rugby-league-world-news/article/1344/over-two-million-viewers-watchrl

Justifies the decision to not let SKY have exclusive rights and go for a BBC/Premier Sports combination IMO. The challenge of course is to get more games on the BBC next time.

To be honest as we where up against the Tennis at the same time we did not do too bad. The casual sports watcher had a lot to choose from.

The official viewing figures from Saturday’s live coverage of #RLWC2013 on the BBC show a peak audience of 2.2m watched England’s final group game against Fiji. The match, which England won 34-12, had a 15% share of the total viewing audience across all channels. These latest figures compare very strongly with other sport available to audiences on Saturday and shows how RLWC2013 is capturing the interest of the British sporting public. For example, the ATP Tennis World Tour Finals on BBC Two at the same time had a 1.2million peak audience, the rugby union England v Argentina international had a peak of 571,000, while the live Premier League football on SKY had a peak of 810,000.

excellent.I think the BBC have missed a trick not taking more group games, especially over the weekend slot where a Sunday game could have easily been feasible.

Agree with this but I guess it's something to be seen in hindsight. Even hard core RL fans have been positively surprised by the quality and competitiveness of the group games so I guess the BBC have also. Bodes well for tv coverage of future international league though if we can take advantage

Where do you get the viewing figures. I have heard the RL was 4 times as big.
BARB aren't showing this week yet

RLWC Site quote 2.2 million peak for England v Fiji with RU England v Argentina peaking at 571k
Live premiership football peaked at 810k (but I can't remember what the game was.

And also, as we are talking media, I was in Birmingham on Saturday and was amazed to see the RLWC logo on billboards....in key places too.
They were for a partnership sponsor cider but the RLWC logo stood out and was very noticeable.
Very surprised to see it but great work by whoever got them there.

Damian Johnson tweeted it

man u vs nal?

God bless Knock-Down Nigel and his big book of spin