Quote: Call Me God "It used to be the case, but I'm not sure now.
According to BARB (ratings org in the UK) 173,000 tuned into the 2017 SL Grand Final on Sky Arena and another 185,000 tuned in on Sky Main Event delivering close to 360,000 for the game...which is good.
Problem is if you search the week prior, then the 2 Semi-finals got 112k and 89k....and the MPG got 50k......which was lower than the reported figures for 2nd tier football, ODI Cricket and the Malaysian GP at 7.30am on a Sunday morning.....all on SKY and Aviva Premiership Rugby and Scottish football on BT Sport...The really depressing thing is that on the Friday September 29th BT got more viewers for their Union than Leeds v Hull in the SL Semifinal clash.....and that's something that was unthinkable a few years back when BT was getting 40k at best.
I believe that this is entirely the fault of SKY TV and their scheduling of RL as a "filler" option as well as the RFL for selling the entire game to SKY TV and permitting them to treat us so badly!'"
I disagree that it's Sky's fault. This is a situation that has developed due to the poor spectacle on the field turning viewers away, and due to the failure by the clubs to market themselves to the sort of audiences that advertisers want to pay the likes of Sky to reach.
Sky heavily promotes F1 because wealth management firms, prestige car manufacturers and high-end jewelley makers want to pay good money to reach the people watching it. The only businesses who want to pay to reach the people watching RL are online bookies and payday lenders - we're no more important to Sky than Premier League Darts in that regard.
