Well unless you have missed the adverts they are advertising free soccer and RU if you get BT broadband. They have obviously chucked money at both soccer and RU in a bid to establish themselves as a true rival to Sky in the digital TV sphere. In many areas such as where I live they are the only real alternative to Sky for those sports as Virgin is not available. So at the moment I doubt the RU clubs care who watches it as the cash is on its way.

Long term it has to be worthwhile for BT to continue but for now they have paid the cash and RU has sold itself well. Meanwhile Nigel Woods ponders the merits of a league of three leagues of 8 v two of 10 etc.

Lineham's from Leeds and the Hull FC youth production line has effectively been Castleford. There must be something wrong with the amateur/youth structure and coaching in what is a proper rugby league city that they've produced so few SL players of note over the last decade.

"The cost of the Football League deal proved one too many a burden for ITV Digital, and it was placed into administration on 27 March 2002, after the League refused to accept a £130m pay cut in its £315m deal with the ITV Sport Channel. Most subscription channels ceased broadcasting on ITV Digital on 1 May 2002. The collapse on 30 June 2002 caused severe financial difficulties for lower-division football clubs who had budgeted for large incomes from the television contract. The Football League sued ITV Digital's parent companies, Carlton and Granada, claiming that the firms had breached their contract in failing to deliver the guaranteed income. And so, by the end of June 2002, the service ceased. The League lost the case, with the judge ruling that it had "failed to extract sufficient written guarantees". The League then filed a negligence claim against its lawyers for failing to press for a written guarantee at the time of the deal with ITV Digital. This time it was awarded a paltry £4 in damages of the £150m it was seeking" -- good old WikiP
Like I say RU can have BT, they will never be able to compete with SKY, ask Setanta & ESPN. RU using BT is a massive victory for Super league.

Sky would have monopolised football if it was allowed to, its not under current contractually regulations. That's why it has to share with other providers. That is the only reason why BT have got some football games. Sky will keep what it wants if it can. Basically if it can make money out of it then they will take it if they can. And no one TV provider can compete with them.

They could have taken the rights to RU but as they have found out the viewing figures are not that great much less than Super League games for domestic games. I agree with you Mash Butty its a big win for SL that RU has gone to a new channel that will be very much dependant on footbal for its subscriptions.

ESPN is a much bigger company than BT its run by Disney and they did not go for the right to RU or if it did it was not willing to pay as much as BT and that says something for you. BT are paying too much for the Union rights. The union clubs will be happy that they will get this money but BT will realise quickly they will not recoup the investment. They are as Dave says giving free sports package with broadband so they are already losing money on the deal. You can not take on the King and expect to survive as many broadcasters have found out to its costs take on SKY adn you lose. Only ESPN can live with them and that's due to its backing by Disney.

And lets remind everyone what Disney own - Marvel comics and all the film rights - Avengers, Spider-Man, IronMan etc, Pixar animations and STAR WARS. A massive company that said no thanks to RU....

"Sky is to offer free broadband to Sky Sports customers – a retaliatory move in response to BT offering BT Sport free to its own broadband users.Sign up to the deal and the new Sky Sports subscribers will receive one year's free unlimited broadband, with just the £14.50 line rental to pay each month. Customers can also choose to get six months of Sky Fibre Unlimited for free, a saving of £20 per month."
The War has started

The ESPN / Disney view is a misrepresentation of business priorities. Whilst the ESPN UK formed an arm of the ESPN / Disney business, there was never a commitment to take on Sky as it was an expansion market based on opportunism rather than a serious power play. Setanta's failure gift wrapped a footy package that Sky couldn't take and terrestrial couldn't afford, and they swooped on RU rights when Sky called the RFU's bluff. They got burned on the latter deal, which did not have the subscription draw expected and were already starting to cut their losses, by sacrificing other UK rights - NHL, NASCAR - before losing the footy package and RU.

On the other hand, BT are a much more serious player in their core market. The tv rights aspect is a power play in the bigger struggle with Sky over the lucrative telephone / broadband market. They are smarter than ESPN and Setanta in understanding that they will never compete with Sky for tv subscriptions alone, despite having their own service (like Virgin Media), so are enticing Sky TV subscribers to their other services. Like it or not they are a serious player in a game much bigger than just tv and consequently RU are in no danger by taking their side.

I am sure that us all true but I doubt £157m or whatever it is they are paying for RU over a few seasons is going to bankrupt BT. I can't remember how much they are paying for soccer but I am sure its a lot of money but given they are offering the matches for free to BT broadband customers its obviously not been bought to make money a via direct a subscription fee. In effect its a huge loss leader and I am sure they think a free service for soccer is going to tempt a lot of people to BT compared to forking out for a Sky Sports sub.

Whatever the market research that lies behind it the fact remains[i they have done it [/iand as part of the deal money is flowing to RU clubs.



How so? I can't see it making a blind bit of difference to RL directly. Sky have not suddenly turned around as a result of RU going to BT and said here is an extra few million to stay with us.

Are they going to come along and offer Sam a million quid to stay with Wigan so they can market the sport better?

In the meantime RU is richer and so can offer higher player wages. We on the other-hand console ourselves we got 6 figure sums for Hock and Mossop and they might come back when they are older.

Here is the real danger to RU.

They are paying too much for it that's obvious just look at the viewing figures SKY got for games. But they have the money and the players will now want a bigger share of the pot. What will happen i think is that BT will see its not generating enough advertisement revenue and subscribers and come the next deal with player contracts signed they will not have the same amount of money to pay with. Therefore there will be a shortfall in the clubs finances whilst the owners with bigger pockets can absorb it over half will struggle.

If ESPN and SKY are not willing to pay 150 million for the deal then its rather obvious its not a money maker. ESPN and SKY will make money out of anything they can and by not paying so much for RU rights its a bad deal for BT. If they got the 6 nations then yes its a very good deal but union domestically just like League does struggle it makes its money on the back of Internationals and that is tied up for now by SKY, BBC and S4C.

Well the RU clubs certainly see the extra money from BT as way to pay players a higher wage.

It may all go belly up in future but you could say that about the NRL and its current TV deal. The way the salary cap is going up there is down to making sure the players share in the games good fortune.

Both RU players here and RL players down under are benefiting directly from TV deals that have brought increased revenue to the sport. The fact it may be a problem for RU later doesn't alter the financial environment now.

I am sure if our players got as organised as their Aussie counterparts they would also want an increased salary cap if the RFL managed to wring more money out of Sky.

Would you deny them that in case at the end of the contract Sky decided not to renew?

Would be interesting to see if the RFL could call SKY's bluff.

I am going to make a guess that 12 months before the RFL contract with sky ends we start hearing rumblings of BT taking RL on-board. Wether we switch broadcaster or not the cap needs to increase and one way is to get rid of 2 sides from the Super League.

That would not hinder SKY at all they would get the same amount of games on just better quality.

The way soccer got billions out of Sky was via a blind auction. Sky thought they were at serious risk of losing soccer completely to Al Jazeera believe it or not. This forced them to over bid. Richard Scudamore who was in charge of the bidding played a blinder.

We need the same thing - competition for the sports broadcasting rights but not just a rumour.

Do we have someone with the same nous as Scudamore in the RFL who could get us into that position playing Sky and BT off against each other?



Well if you take that as adding two teams cap to the mix the cap is just over £1.8m now they rolled the special dispensations for long serving players etc into the main cap so that is £3.6m divided by 12. That is £300K per club extra. It would be a start but not enough really is it as it still leaves us way short of the competition. We need a big increase so some serious money is available.

But it's not two clubs is it. Bradford are currently not getting their Sky money, so it's actually only one payment saved.

But the salary cap did not get increased the money just went to the clubs and that's for 1 season only. Long term SL needs to get rid of the 2 worst on field and off field performing clubs.

Not going to quote your reply Dave0

Its so bloody simple if the RFL cut 2 club thats 300k. Should be you can play 1 marquee player what you like upto 500k per season. I am right in thinking that Sam is on approx 300k per season so if you add that to the 300k from cutting 2 SL clubs it would give 600k to us in extra cap space without the top earner on it. So you could divide the 600k around some of the better players in the squad.

Only issue you would get is the lesser clubs could not do this but its not the lesser clubs that are losing players to the NRL. I can see a tinkering in the cap in the next 2 years which might end up with something like i have mentioned.