Given the state of the economy, it's probably as good as we'll get, even if inflation'll eat away a fair bit of it (there's more chance of Jonny Vegas standing up in public and saying that Wigan are the greatest RL side this planet's ever seen than the Bank of England getting an inflation forecast right!).

For online rights to be worth something, the quality (and money spent) on recording non-Sky games would need to be massively improved. MLB/NBA and whatever already have broadcast quality feeds coming from every game. We had some bloke with a camcorder and comedy biased club commentators.

It's a superb deal for us. The football league deal went down 26%!!! After doing some basic divisions, this deal is worth about £2million a year more. You take inflation, but it was only 3 years ago so the deal has probably improved, which is a fantastic deal for the sport considering some of the deals of other sports.

Good deal and well done to those involved.

Now can they quash once and for all any idea that the extra money will be to fund another team in SL. The money will help cover inflation for the clubs already involved and another mouth at the table will make the deal won, meaningless. Besides money matters there are simply not enough quality players around to equip the fourteen teams we have now never mind another team. We may be forced to consider a move back down to twelve as the financial pressure mounts on a few more clubs. The future of the game has to secured with this money not just frittered away propping up failing businesses with little to no future, harsh I know but the wordl is changing very quickly.

ours is something like a 8-10% increase......we can't grumble with that

Depends on how it compares still. Our last deal wasn't the best so even though gained an increase if still stands much lower to say Guiness Premiership and unequal based on viewing figures we could still be well behind.

Our last deal was £50mil over 3 years. Guiness Premiership was £54mil over 3 years.

It was to be expected. The added value of Widnes obviously counted.

This deal look unbelivably good when you consider it is an increase even though every other sport Premiership football aside has taken a right kicking on how much they get for TV rights .

was'nt the £50m for everything,SL,championship,challenge cup etc over 3 years though?...or have i got that wrong?


pro rota over 5 years thats £83m....we just got £90m just for SL.......BONUS!

I think it's also worth taking into account that a lot of clubs by the start of the new TV deal will be playing and functioning from top class facilities. I think a lot of the money that would have gone into promotion, community development and other off the field activities was spent on architects and stadium development. This time the money can be spent on other things to develop clubs further.

John , which club apart from Saints have spent a penny actually on new stadium planning and costs ?

Well Castelford spend the bulk of thier transfer fee for Westerman on thier planning application. Most clubs won't have funded the stadium but they certainly will have funded they planning and that can cost.

Like I said, architects cost a lot of money. Planning is probably a better way of putting it.