If broadcasters are indeed 'taking the ' then I'm afraid the RFL have only themselves to blame. I have little doubt that they would have made more from a FTA broadcaster than they will from this doomed exercise.


As for giving my head a shake, I spend plenty on watching RL; until recently I was living down south and travelling to Wigan games regularly throughout the season, with hotel bills and travelling costs it wasn't cheap. So I'll take no lectures on being a skinflint, but I wouldn't stream this if it was £1.99; we can't afford to encourage such idiocy.

Of course it's not the price, hardly anyone's d about 3 quid but on top of SKY, TV license, Premier Sports plus broadband and line rental, it's a bit of a kick in the face to have to pay to watch a friendly that are usually broadcast on BBC.

Last week we talked about how paid sports TV packages have no future, this week we don't want RFL stream matches (which people said were the future), but want the rights to be given away for nothing. One thing is certain, no matter what they do, RFL will always do the wrong thing.

If its part of a focused, attempt to look into alternative revenue streams and way of doing things, great. If its one man streaming from his Nokia and the quality of production is bad it'll be a disaster.

A possible alternative would have been to stream the match via Facebook/ Youtube directly FOC.

Just a thought but are the Samoan players in super league going to be released for this game? If not, we won't be facing the best opposition after all.

Encouraged by your example, I have done the same, mate.

My kneejerk reaction to this was very negative. But I've had a good think about it and I reckon that all in all, it's a positive move by the RFL.

1) BBC reported offered next to nothing for it, by accepting this we devalue the sport further. Similar to the Stobart deal - poor.

2) More and more TV is going online these days, if the RFL want to dip the toe in the water - when would be a better time to do a test?

3) If we are going down the road of "give it to the BBC and spread the gospel" - No floating fan is watching sport at 10am in the morning, let alone die hard fans. On top of that , England vs Samoa is likely to be quite one sided and I dont see it being a great tool for converting the unbelievers tbh.

I reckon we should all just chip in the £3.50, back the RFL so they can show to other providers we have got some clout. Maybe this could be the first step on the road to breaking free of Sky's shackles?

I can't see anyone mention that you get it free if you buy magic weekend tickets.

Next to nothing plus 1-2million audience is worth far more than next to nothing and an audience of 10-20k.

As for more and more tv going on-line the one area that isn't happening as much is sport because it doesn't offer the same advantages as scripted tv to online broadcasters.

PPV just doesn't work for sports outside of boxing/mma. It didn't when then FA tried it, It didn't when the premier league tried it. It won't when we try it. Sport, especially live sport, lends itself to tv viewership. It's an event that lends itself to s large screen, has to be watched at a set time and can't be 'binge watched'.

The RFL would be far better looking at joining forces with the NRL and selling their Rugby League channel as a subscription via all platforms, Sky, BT, freeview, and on-line all over the world.

1-2m audience for RL at 10https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-amazon-nfl-20170405-story.htmlrl

$50m for 10 games

Obviously I am well aware that RL is not quite the NFL - but if this works, I think we could begin to see more and more of this kind of thing. I want to RFL to be in as strong a position as possible when it comes to negotiating.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/39564040

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/39564040

That's another point actually. What revenue can the RFL realistically expect from this? £60-75k? To make it an actually decent stream they'll have to take a full camera crew with all HD setups, commentators, pay for the bandwidth it's going to consume, maybe even a studio, insurance etc. The costs are going to be probably going to leave this with a tiny profit.

Yeah I've been back and forth on this a bit since it got announced.

Obviously RL has to tread the fine line between devaluing it's International game, earning some coin and getting as many people watching as they can on terrestrial, obviously far easier said than done. Something I'd love to know is if the RFL have sounded out other channels like C4 & C5 to see if they maybe want to see if thers's a audience for them to make use of, and maybe if it's reasoanly successful it could be something that could be built on.

As for the BBC. RL has been on that channel for decades and hasn't exactly brought fans flocking to the game during that time. So I don't excatly buy the spead the game thing, although we do need to maintain a presense on free to air. Obviously they don't get week in week out SL games but still. BBC for ages had it too good for too long as far as being giving the Countries Premier Sporting Competitions. They should have learned by now they can't low ball sports if they hav a genunine interest. Ateotd with all the licencing fees they get, if they really wanted to fill a slot on BBC2 in a morning or wherever they wanted to put it they could of and got a 1 million viewers, who I'd guess would all be hardcore RL fans.

Saying that if there is a time to try something like this , why not give it a crack now and see how it all works from the logistics to how many people buy, if it falls flat on it's face, then we'll know and move on. Tbh apart from the big events like World Cup and 4 Nations, The RFL in most cases are damned if they do and damned if they don't imo.

Like others have said as RL fan, a 100% RL channel would be awesome. Where we get SL games, NRL games, Internations etc, the lot would be on, along with some great RL shows to completment it. Like others said , then give the public the chance to either buy a standalone channel, or make it part of the Sky Sports package. Anyway it makes too much sense, it'd never happen.

Guess it's a way to dip your toes into the water of a self-serving streaming network. Seems to be working well for WWE. Offer enough content and people will pay a monthly subscription for sure.

£10 A month from 100k is only £12m a year. Then there are the costs of production, marketing, the infrastructure needed to broadcast, lower sponsorship, etc.