If the TV deal is improved so the clubs are receving more money, then we could talk about raising the Salary cap. Not until then.

It would be a massive failure on our part if we failed to negotiate a well improved deal. Sky have invested a lot in us in the past to create one of their more popular products. They're not going to want to that away by paying under the odds for their (allegedly) 2nd most popular product and watching the decent portion of our player pool dissapear down under.

there are some people on this thread living in cloud cuckoo land, if we manage 90% of the current deal then we've done well.

What's your reasoning behind that opinion?

You, sir, are quite the haggler!

Unfortunately,just because someone alleges that a sport is the second most popular,doesn't make it true.Club RL compares favourably with Club RU,unfortunately it doesn't compare favourably with International RU.Nor does it compare favourably with cricket,or indeed darts.People need accurate facts to support their demand that RL must achieve a substantial increase.In the present climate,a modest increase would be a good achievment.People need to start living in the real world,not their own fantasy land.

Hasnt Lewis already said that ESPN are involved though and want to take some games?

If that is the case they are going to know what SKY paid 3 years ago and are going to know what sort of money that they will have to put up if they are indeed interested.

Try horse racing and channel 4

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13384857Incomes to fall back to 2004 levels[/url

Sky will have to reduce costs for advertisers, they can't do that whilst paying increased amounts for TV rights, they have paid less for football recently, and I expect they will pay less for RL.

Sky will repurchase the rights for SL. They will pay a bit more for it. They will do this for three reasons. Firstly they need to pay roughly what they are paying now, for the product they are paying for to be of the quality it is. Sky dont want lower quality RL because fewer people will watch it. Fewer people watch it, fewer people pay for sky, less money is made from advertisers.

Sky cutting 25% of the cost of RL would likely cut the rights value by about £5m a year. A miniscule sum to Sky, a good amount to RL. It simply doesnt make sense for them to damage their product to save such a miniscule amount.

Secondly, ESPN are rumoured to be bidding, which should force the price up.

Thirdly, RL benefits from its reasonably small size at the moment. We dont have massive long term contracts and debts hanging over us. That gives us a huge amount more flexibility to, if we need to, take a lower amount and go to terrestrial television. Sky pay a heavy premium for exclusivity and the lower visibility they give. If they stop giving us that premium, then we dont need to stay with them. Remembering the premium they pay us, is a fair amount to us, but a miniscule amount to them.

Sky will pay the minimum they think they can get away with paying to get what they want.

They're a business, it's not up to them to run the clubs or worry about how the product might change if the clubs lose part of their current funding.

Given the likely lack of competition in the bidding process, there's no reason to suggest they will offer any more for the product than they are currently paying.

If RL starts losing players because it can't afford to pay them, where are they going to go? Domestic rugby union. Who has the main rights to domestic rugby union games? The net effect on the quality of the two products to Sky? Minimal.

Anyone got the demographic breakdown of the viewing figures for Super League?

Would suspect that the value of the TV deal reflects the fact that most SL viewers are working class Northerners who will have less disposable income and will be less inclined to purchase luxury brands. This makes it harder for SKY to sell expensive advertising to fund the television rights.

Contrast this with cricket and RU which probably have a wealthier viewing public ...

Value of the TV deal will not significantly increase until we get better viewing figures amongst the demographics advertisers are interested in (ie. Southerners).

'interested' and 'rumoured' go into the same box as 'alleged'.

Clearly,ESPN will be interested and rumoured to be interested in RL,but that is far from knowing that they would come anywhere close to actually bidding,never mind out bidding Sky for the rights.Incidentally,if they were to do so,wait for the complaints from 'supporters',when they find out that Warrington v Hull is scheduled for 6.00pm on a thurs evening.Sky actively schedule against ESPN,meaning that ESPN have to counter by scheduling at inconvenient times,to 'beat' Sky.
One area where the RFL may be able to get an improvement in terms,is for the thurs evening Championship game,which now regularly gets around 60,000 viewers on Sky Sports 4.