The problem is the lack of competition for the broadcasting rights. Setanta were the only serious attempt to crack SKY's sporting monopoly, and look what happened there. The BBC will shell out for the directors' old school friends down at Twickers, but that's it, and under the incoming Cameron Government, the BBC will find itself even less likely to be able to do anything Murdoch isn't keen on.

It's hard to see where a competitor to SKY could come from, unless one of the major US networks decided it wanted to start a European operation. If that were the case, then RL would be a tasty morsel because of its viewer numbers, but... BUT.... it's not enough on it's own. The only sport in this country which will sell enough subscriptions to make an operation viable is
soccer. That's why Murdoch will pay through the nose for that, because he knows that by puchasing soccer he's effectively purchasing the sports broadcasting market as a whole.

I can't really envisage a situation in which SKY isn't the only game in town. That sucks. We effectively have to rely on them continuing to see the need for RL to be fully professional in order to bring in the subscriptions and advertising they want.

why are the other FTA channels in teh UK not interested in showing sport? I always thought sport was a high audience event for TV channels? I know it isn't cheap to show live sport but if there is an audience, and with loads of channels these days to fill I'm surprised there isn;t more interest. Or is it just that SKY pays for exclusive rights and the RFL have never dared challenge this by putting it out on the open market?

I would suspect thats the case.

Will never happen smokey, like sayin the two hulls or, leeds and bradford could unite under one banner. cas fans and fev fans will never ever support a team called wakefield, and since castleford and featherstone combinedhave about 2/3 of the districts rl support the district will never unite under one banner. no one from castlford, featherstone, pontefract or knottingley considers themselves as being in anyway part of wakefield, even parts of normington are of the same opinion. The council reorganisation was a beurocratic change not one in the identity of the areas. If leeds was for some reason swallowed up into the area of bradford council would you coinsider yourself from bradford? would you suddenly want to become a bulls supporter?

there is actually a wakefield fan on the cas board asking if the district should be split up into castleford and wakefield just to give you an idea of how much we are united in this district.

However i do agree with you that both wakefield and castlford are at a crossroads and the next few years will be the differance between success and many more years in sl and being dropped down to the championship.

Give a FTA a free deal for the right coverage, watch merchandise/crowds/sponsorship rise and it will quickly replace lost revenue.

The clubs unable to adapt will move down a peg and those in a better position to do so will move up. The gap between divisions would be more breachable.

Sorry but could not disagree more.

If you take £1.2m (minimum) out of every club's income, with little warning, many will go straight to the wall. Their financial situation is so tenuous. They simply cannot replace that revenue overnight, if at all. Leeds could probably stand the initial shock - you can doi that when you are owned by a plc and you made a mint from selling a cricket ground - and a club with a rich owner prepared to stump up that much cash on TOP of what he already does could ride the initial storm until or unless he said "stakes too high - I fold", but it would immediately kill any other clubs. And £1.2m is a hell of a lot of revenue to make up - for example, you would need around 12.5k more on the gate EACH GAME to achieve that. From day 1. If indeed you could fit them in.

And you are IMO extremely extremely näive if you think crowds will rise substantially. Why should they? Especially since half the competition will have been blown into oblivion before the season even starts, and which non-SL clubs could immediately step up to SL level - and SL costs? Widnes, if O'Connor put his hand much much further in his pocket, and who else? You would start the first season with a handful of clubs. At best.

And as for sponsorship...the big deals come from the brands being seen on TV anyway. So why on EARTH would sponsorship rise substantially? If you think viewing figures would rocket through a seriously weakened competition being shown on a FTA I fear you are way too optimistic.

\
as usual you would be wrong

As usual i couldnt care less what you think. Troll. Leave the discussions to people who care about the game. Thanks

Interesting argument, but here's another dimension.

Never mind the clubs - what if the RFL themselves found themselves in administration? What would happen then?

An Aussie tour, pretty damn sharpish.

A ten team SL , now who was suggesting such a thing a few weeks/months ago ?

Obviously what followed this post by Steve fox was other fans idea's of what Super league should look like [ usually including their club instead of somebody else's ] , whats up boys , the sport not as important as YOUR club , not forgetting that you are all RL fans before you're club fans

Yeah right

you should only comment about things which are true.

this would mean much less commentry.

the BBC were interested in the SL rights previously when the RFL was holding off from Sky but their offer was less.

pleased to help

Link/evidence?

Could easily have happened in the past, pretty difficult nowadays.

Large proportion of RFL income comes from Sport England and has lots of strings attached in terms of what it gets spent on, as it all is monitored pretty closely. There have been other sports were this has happened (hockey) and Sport England works pretty hard to keep individual governing bodies on the right path financially.

Obviously, If the government reduces public spending on sport, then the RFL income will take a cut and development officer posts etc. will go.