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3 comments...

1. Source?
2. What is the average over 12 rounds?
3. "16,500" sounds very rounded.

I am confused

that's the trouble when you sell your sport for an exclusive deal for 50 or 60 million or whatever it was its not yours to give to anybody. like them or loathe them superleague is sky's property until the TV deal runs out and any crumbs that are offered by way of limited highlights on terrestrial TV are purely at sky's discretion. Without that exclusive deal we wouldn't have got the amount of money to prop our clubs up in a superleague.

I am fully aware that Union is 5th and soon to be possibly overtaken by Basketball........but that didn't stop Super 14 handing out a 5th franchise to even things up. The IRB will do everything in their power to shore up the ARU and believe me, as much as you aren't keen on Union, you wouldn't want to stand toe to toe with that lot financially on a global stage. Sevens is the key to their future and now it's a 5 ring sport, they will get the chance to be promoted to a far bigger audience than League could ever hope for.
On the flip side, if the new regulations on Gambling come in, the NRL will be too busy shi77ing themselves to notice what ARU are up to

By what criteria? Apart from Melbourne I'd say the S14 clubs are alot stronger in each city than the Aleague teams, and overall the S14 comp is more popular and has a higher income than the Aleague. Western Force made a $2million profit last year, which Aleague club managed that?

clearly you havent read the media reports on A League soccer relegating S14 to last on TV.

the soceroos crowds kill what union gets now too.

if you are talking about losing money, the NSWRU, QRU all lose millions too

so would the ARU if they didnt play a test match in hong kong

australia shows clearly that if you get the competition (RL) to a high standard union will die off.

If your comparing Leagues then club for club the S14 clubs are still stronger than the Aleague clubs.

If your comparing soccer to union as codes then yes I would say soccer is ahead of Union which seems to be drifting into obscurity, and good riddance!

yes im comparing different sports.

as i said before, union is the weakest football code in australia and has been overtaken by soccer.

Better yet, give a game to a terrestrial channel with adverts, and have the first and last adverts in any lead up/half times/end before review as SKY adverts, so people can watch it for "free" and if they like it there can be a bloody great advert for where they can get more of it. That should be somewhat appealing to SKY also?

I sort of wish BBC/ITV would get their own sports channels on freeview, and just stick on any football shows/SL show etc during the daytime. I'm pretty sure they could get something out of that, and have more opportunity to show live games?

Good idea in theory, would never happen in the real world unless they were forced to break up their exclusivity, but even if they could be persuaded to give up one game a week, i imagine Sky would want to keep the big games for themselves, leaving the Salford v Catalans or Wakefield v Harlequins (for example) which although could be a draw for regular RL fans, wouldn't be much of a draw for the casual sports fan.

Still it would be a shot to nothing for Sky, they could even produce it and sell it on cheaper or for a bit of free advertising if it went to ITV/Ch4/Ch5/Dave!

A national weekly highlights show on FTA at a decent time would be a good start. In fact showing the best bits of games will actually lead to more interest than showing full games initially.