I was thinking the other day about the championship clubs, the problems about TV and what they get out of showing the games. I have often said that the TV rights could be sold to a terrestrial TV channel. This would help the clubs as they can approach bigger companies to sponsor the club and ask for a greater amount of money for the sponsorship. Being on terrestrial TV means that they have the potential to reach every home instead of just a selective group.

I then had an Idea completely different from this one. All the games are recorded most of the games, if not all of them are put onto DVD. Why don’t the clubs join together set up a website and stream their games over the internet. I am sure it could be done live, but will probably cost a lot to do this, they could though do it after the game has finished it could be an hour or a day later. You pay a subscription fee this could be yearly monthly weekly or pay for the individual game. This would generate income for the club in two ways that I can think of, the first is the money paid for the subscriptions, secondly the advertisement on the website.
With this way of showing the game, it will keep people going to the games let people like myself that live abroad see every game and let the supporters that went to the game re-watch the game. The clubs could then use the site to put behind the scenes footage on and interviews anything to keep the fans coming back and visiting the site.

I suggested this a few months back , it would however require the clubs to have better recording equipment , maybe the RFL could supply each club with a decent video camera [ Sony do HD broadcast quality cameras for less than £ 2 grand ] to provide better footage for disciplinary matters , especially considering SL clubs footage is provided by SKY but the Championship clubs need to pay to provide theirs

It would then be able to put together a Highlights,review,preview type show for a couple of grand , this to be shown initially on the internet to ' polish ' the production , but then possibly offered to either FTA or satelite TV , income could possibly be generated by the ' SL sponsored on SKY by IRN BRU ' type sponsorship

Televising live is a complete waste of money , especially midweek , and especially on a channel like premier , the only live Championship RL should be the NRC final and the Championship GF s

The problem is 1 st , SKY hold the broadcast rights ,2 nd your plan like mine would require the clubs to work together , but unfortunatley the clubs management is nearly as stupid as the RFL administration on matters like these , I know , I have spoken to several of them on matters of co operation , for some strange reason they think they are in competition with each other , when in fact SL and football are the enemy

If York did this I would certainly subscribe. Their YouTube highlights are decent quality, so I would happily pay a tenner a month for the full games.

Try ' Eagles TV ' , their quality is essentially broadcast quality , the bloke who does it also is frustrated at the inability for the clubs to work together on this , he gave me an insight into the costs associated to produce a ' Match of the Day/B and A ' type show

Very little in reality , the software available to edit such a show would cost a few hundred quid , but trying to get everybody round a table to discuss it would be nye on impossible , and not something the RFL are going to suggest

I know the guy who does the stuff for Doncaster, and he does all the Doncaster Rovers 'Rovers Player' stuff for the Football Club, and he can turn out some top quality stuff given the opportunity.

I watch HKR TV & it is good enough if you can't get to live games, but for clubs to make money it needs to be live in prime time on terestial TV (I was once told by a Hull FC director that the sponsorship money that could be got if our game was shown on terestial tv would be better than the SKY deal at the time, not sure how true it was but it would have brought in a good amount) The problem is ITV are not interested the BBC can't pay & would not show it if it was given to them free (as was tried before the SKY deal) The problem when asked (1989 ish) was that if they push Rugby league they would have lost union & possibly soccer at that time (my source a BBC sports programe director).

So I have found out that it is relatively inexpensive, someone would pay 10 pounds (no pounds key on Canadian computer)

And the clubs will not work together.

Starbug, I would not do a highlights program I would show all the game. I would also put player interviews on post and pre match analysis and possibly let fans record their own items and submit them. I would say that the subscription money would pay for the cost of putting the show on and the profit would come from the advertisement. I have done no cost analysis so it is all assumption but I think it should be looked into.
I am no internet guru but you get paid, as I understand it, if you host links to other sites and people use your site to access the sites.
Keeping the fans on the site for as long as possible without them getting board is the key to selling advertisement space

I would say that if someone could show the clubs that they can make money from this and they just have to work together to make it happen they would be up for it.
Another option is for the clubs to go it alone, they could do it on their own website but the costs would increase.
Who owns the rights to the games? Is it the club or the RFL?

Broadcast rights are owned by SKY [ or they were last time I asked ] , some clubs already put highlights or full matches on the internet , but the quality is generally poor , to do it properly you need multiple camera's , and showing live , or nearly live could impact on your attendances , I'll agree to disagree about the merits of ' Live ' compared to ' Highlights ' for lower tier sport

I would show the full game but not live, at best I would say an hour after the game realistically it would probably be the next day. I don’t see this having an effect on the crowds. There would be a cost, if this would include multiple cameras I think the revenue would make this worthwhile. Another spin off could be bringing in media students from local college’s as part of their studies, this brings the community aspect into it also. I think you are probably right about Sky holding the rights to the games, I also think this could be challenged as they do not show any of the games. It all comes down to the clubs joining together on this, this could be the stumbling block, and this seems to be the stumbling block on a lot of issues in the championship.

As has been suggested in the past , its time a dedicated person was appointed within the RFL with the specific responsibility for the development of the Championships and the clubs in them, unaffected by other issues within the game, somebody with vision and imagination, the old idea's dont work anymore, and new ones need more thought, it seems all the RFL care about is SL, and they just re hash ideas used in the top tier

But that would need them to admit that things arent working, something they would never do

sky gave the rights back to the RFL i think; 'they would rather buy some 3d camera's then spend money on showing championship games' despite it being fairly well watched