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.

Sky will pay as much as they think they can get away with without damaging the product, what I was saying was that 'as little as they can get away with' is higher for sky (and higher again for ESPN) because of the lower visibility of their platforms. Sky have to pay more than ITV or the BBC because if they both offered the same, ITV/BBC can offer high visibility.

Also, they do 'worry' about how the product might change if the clubs lose part of their income. If it damages the product then the value of what they are paying for changes.

Or the NRL, or sport as a whole. It benefits Sky for the quality of RL to be as high as possible.

Sky dont simply pay the minimum they can get away with. They pay an amount they believe to be congruent with the quality of the product they want to offer. Paying a minimal amount could damage the product they (sky) then sell, which in turn affects the amount they make from selling that product on.

Its like a Chef will pay a premium to buy top quality ingredients. He will get them for as little as he can, but he isnt going to damage his end product by scrimping on what he is prepared to pay for his tomatoes.

Hopefully , as at the moment SKY dont pay anything for this coverage , the club owners need to decide if they want it to continue

I am going to totally agree with Smokey...

I think this post is spot on!

Of course, I do have something to add which I know he will disagree with me on, despite his argument backing this theory!

This apocryphal tale that Sky demand that the RFL have clubs like Quins and Crusaders in the SL... they don't! What they want is a good quality product, played in good stadiums, to good crowds. They prefer Wakefield v Castleford (well, they like Wigan v St Helens et al best of all) but they could care less about Quins v Crusaders, or should I say this is not about geography for them, if this game was pulling in a 7 to 10k crowd and was of generally good quality they would love it... but now, they don't really care! Super League is a good product that supports there current premium product of football, same for RU BTW.

of course I disagree, its complete nonsense.

What Sky want, is good quality clubs, good quality games, in good stadiums, with lots of people watching on TV. They want a game which represents what their advertisers want their products to represent.

And very few companies want their products associated with two small northern towns like Wakefield and Castleford that most people in this country couldnt point to on a map. Even fewer companies want to associate their products with two small northern towns because their games get three or four thousand people more to attend than some other games.

Seems like they would be interested, but i dont know how much this is just Lewis bluffing to try and inflate the sky deal. On a personal note, i cant afford ESPN and sky sports so not sure what id do it was split down the middle.

Id also be interested in seeing viewing figures and demographics if anyone knows where they would be ?

www.cplg.com/properties/view/160 Nearly 1.75million spectators attended matches in 2009 and over 10 million watched the 2009 Super League season. www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/su ... to-go-from "Rugby League’s appeal as a television spectacle shows no sign of diminishing and viewing figures for Super League games in 2010 were again higher than those witnessed by the Aviva Premiership." What is undeniable is that more do watch Super League than the Aviva Premiership, but as someone said SKY want the product to look the best it can with their logo on the right hand corner, but they will pay the minimum amount possible to do this, they are a business and are interested in profit alone. If rugby league began to lose viewing figures than there would be a steep decline in the price they pay to have it on their screens. Another angle that has been brought up previously is the perception that rugby league is worth less to a broadcaster because the advertising revenue is less. This is one that gets banded about on the various forums, does anyone have anything to back this up one way or another.

www.cplg.com/properties/view/160 Nearly 1.75million spectators attended matches in 2009 and over 10 million watched the 2009 Super League season. www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/su ... to-go-from "Rugby League’s appeal as a television spectacle shows no sign of diminishing and viewing figures for Super League games in 2010 were again higher than those witnessed by the Aviva Premiership." What is undeniable is that more do watch Super League than the Aviva Premiership, but as someone said SKY want the product to look the best it can with their logo on the right hand corner, but they will pay the minimum amount possible to do this, they are a business and are interested in profit alone. If rugby league began to lose viewing figures than there would be a steep decline in the price they pay to have it on their screens. Another angle that has been brought up previously is the perception that rugby league is worth less to a broadcaster because the advertising revenue is less. This is one that gets banded about on the various forums, does anyone have anything to back this up one way or another.

I take it your not in sales then?

If I went in to my boss and said forget my sales target..given the current ecomonic climate and government spending cuts..it will be hard to get any increase in sales this year. Can you forget my sales target and accept ' a modest increase' instead...I can tell you I wouldnt be in a job for very long.

You seem to have disappeared up your BARB statistics manual and have formed a view that the viewing stats are the only tool on which we can argue for an increase. Yes this is an important element in the mix, but its not the only element. Competition is key to driving up prices as is the 'value' the broadcaster place on this element (SL) in their sport portfolio.

The RFL need to develop our brand better than they have been doing, and get some competition into the mix ASAP.

In Oz there is talk of a $1 Billion TV deal for the NRL - the main reason is competition between chennels, 9, 10 and Fox. I'm not saying we can come near theat sort of price, but we have to improve on current levels, or we're dead in the water.

football revenue from tv may have gone down but there is a long history of overpayment for the rights to football, cant really say they have overpaid for RL rights in the past

You are not wrong about this...



But totally wrong about this...

Wrexham - Population 43k
Wakefield - Population 80k
Castleford - Population 50k
Wrexham County Borough - Total Population - 130k
Wakefield District - Total Population - 324k

Wakefield is the 17th largest district in England, if Wrexham were in England, it would rank 157th! Wakefield is, as you know, is also in the 4th largest conurbation in the UK... Wrexham is not classed as being part of an urban conurbation and is classed as rural.

Companies like to appeal to areas with large demographics, like Wakefield... how much more wrong could you be!

Really, you think the marketing director of BMW is sitting there thinking, you know what, i wasnt going to sponsor/advertise during Rugby League but now we know that WMDC is the 17th largest district in England and Wakefield is in that (even though if you speak to any Wakefield or Castleford fan they would argue very very strongly that they WMDC is simply a political entity and the towns in WMDC are particularly disparate with very parochial attitudes) and they have attendances 2/3k more than Crusaders, Also they are in the 4th largest connurbation in the UK and completely overshadowed by Leeds and Bradford, we definitely want to be involved now we know Wakefield and Castleford are involved. Sod Wales, we want more small non-descript northern pit villages thats what BMW want to be associated with, not the entire country, not big cities, small northern towns which for all intents and purposed are simply suburbs of Leeds?

Why is this population comparison between Crusaders and Wakefield relevent anyway?

Apart from Wakefield been a city and having one of the largest BMW shops in the North of England you are right