Premier Sports to become exclusive home of Monday Night Rugby League The Betfred Championship will have a new home from 2022, as the RFL today confirms an extensive and exciting two-year broadcast partnership with Premier Sports. Under the partnership, Premier Sports will provide live and exclusive coverage from the start of the season in early 2022 to the Play-Offs in the autumn culminating in the Million Pound Game – and including every match of the Summer Bash featuring all 14 clubs in a single venue on the same weekend. Subscription currently costs £12.99 a month and Premier Sports is available across a range of platforms, including online. READ MORE ON THIS STORY...

Premier Sports to become exclusive home of Monday Night Rugby League The Betfred Championship will have a new home from 2022, as the RFL today confirms an extensive and exciting two-year broadcast partnership with Premier Sports. Under the partnership, Premier Sports will provide live and exclusive coverage from the start of the season in early 2022 to the Play-Offs in the autumn culminating in the Million Pound Game – and including every match of the Summer Bash featuring all 14 clubs in a single venue on the same weekend. Subscription currently costs £12.99 a month and Premier Sports is available across a range of platforms, including online. READ MORE ON THIS STORY...

General good news increasing exposure for the Championship. Doesn't say if it is worth anything for the clubs. Monday night away at Whitehaven might be tough for our part-time boys. Premier sports shows French Top 14 and the Welsh/Scottish/Irish/Italian/South African RU competition so might have some expousre to general rugby lovers. NetgemTV offering might be a good deal if you want to watch in HD and don't have Sky and would like some more channels thrown in. The general internet stream from Premier Sports can be a bit flaky.

If they do pay anything for the rights it will be a first. Championship TV rights have never generated a penny, going right the way back to the old Northern Ford Premiership renouncing their part of the first SL / Sky contract so they could find a TV deal of their own. It's always been done on a costs-only basis.

Either way, it's good that the lower leagues will have some sort of TV exposure.

Seeing as how they are giving the rights away, would the BBC not have been interested.,
Going on a free to air platform would have meant that the viewing figures would be significantly greater than being on Premier, which would surely increase interest in the sport, this could only have been good for the clubs participating.
The BBC cannot compete with Pay per view channels and have lost a lot of sport. To be given Championship RL surely would have been attractive to them.
This may well be an opportunity missed. I doubt the take up on Premier Sports will be massive.

Crikey, the BBC could have titled it Floodlit Rugby League and put it on BBC2! I used to love that show back in the day!

Why not ?

Wouldn't surprise me if they were offered it, the Beeb might have said no. The Championship is a bit like after the Lord Mayor's show. Not a draw outside the M62 nor within it one suspects. If no money being paid what is the point? I'm not interested in paying £13 per month on top of other subscriptions I have.

How many people are going to pay Premier Sports, for watching in the majority part time players on a Monday evening? We need to know IF any money has been paid, and how much?

Would it not have been better to give it to a broadcaster available to a wide audience on free viewing TV?

As most likely, the TV Rights were given away. Giving it to a free to air broadcaster would surely have been best, instead of placing them with a minor Pay To View sports channel.
You are so right Jaybs, It is not really a satisfactory outcome and not much reason to rejoice.

No doubt Ralph the Rimmer thinks it's a bit of a coup!

It’s a drag to put the boot in every time something comes up but having thought about this deal it is lose lose all around. The number of likely subscribers and added content value to the TV company is so relatively small they can’t have paid anything so that’s a loss for the clubs and the RFL. The cost of hiring a presenter and filming the games will probably exceed the revenue from added content for current subscribers plus new subscribers interested in RL - so a loss for the TV company. And the players most apparently part time will have to travel up on a typical workday Monday with knock on impact for rest of working week - so a loss for them. The attendance at a Monday night game is likely to be lower than a weekend game-loss for the clubs and for supporters who would have gone to a Saturday/ Sunday game.
Likely additional visibility for the game - low. Likelihood of persuading Sky that others are interested in paying for RL rights - low. Sigh!

It's all very well saying "give it to a broadcaster" but said broadcaster has to be interested in showing it, and it's obvious no-one is. And I don't blame them - it's a part-time, second tier competition in a regional sport. Why would the BBC, ITV, C4 etc be interested in showing it? The only alternative to Premier Sports is doing it in-house on OurLeague, and it looks like the RFL would prefer the safe bet, which is reasonable.

If they couldn't give it away to a "free to air" broadcaster, it shows how low the rugby league stock has fallen. Clearly apart from their Challenge Cup efforts, the Beeb are clearly targeting their funding at Women's sport like Football & Union. ITV might have found a home for RL on ITV4 if it had anyone capable of selling the sport properly but it doesn't.

May well be the sign of things to come for SL too in the years ahead

The BBCs commitment to equality of sports coverage regardless of gender (or perhaps interest) is absolute. It’s interest in ensuring a northern sport gets coverage, less so.

Having said that they moved their HQ to Salford so they may feel they have done all they need for the North. The cabbies of Salford will be rolling in it with all those return fares to Islington, Mill Hill and Finchley for the stars commuting to the new HQ.

How many part-time, second tier competitions - in any sport - get terrestrial TV coverage?