I don't understand why any club would accept a deal like this when IMG points are offered for increasing engagement on social media and YouTube. Why give away all those clicks for a few hundred quid?

I suspect that growing YouTube and other social media interactions will be more attractive to advertisers than exposure on a little known TV channel. It would be interesting to know if there's any actual data to back this up or disprove it...e.g early challenge cup rounds on BBC Red Button v. those on Our League.

The point is that club want fans interacting with its own social media channels, reacting to its own clips and pushing through to its own YT. All those metrics have value for both IMG and for attracting future sponsors. If it was on Terrestrial TV or a dedicated show on Sky to compliment other coverage its different, but a small TV channel with low viewing figures and little cut trough offers little if any benefit. The value of Championship TV rights are more or less cancelled out by the cost of production. To the bigger clubs, who already have media teams it makes complete sense to utilise its own media assets.

It's not like it's got a wide reach like BBC.
The only people watching on here are rugby fans who could have gone to the game.

Apologies if this has been mentioned as haven’t read back.

If you look at the clubs YT channel and other platforms it’s clear that by far and away the most views/interactions are from match highlights and full match replays. This is worth around maybe 10,000 views upwards a week and over the season that’s hundreds of thousands. All relevant to that media element of the scoring section posted by WT earlier this week.

These interactions if the game is available widely and on replay with subscription or repeat will dramatically decrease and potentially have a detrimental impact on both interactions and subscriptions across all platforms.

For a club like us I looked at what level we are at and I put us just within the bracket that if these were reduced we could be at risk of losing ING points or they would be made more difficult to attain/maintain.

The financial compensation for this is not sufficient. That said if views of the channel/new deal are agreed to be added to clubs scores then that could work. But then that would also have to apply to SL clubs and with Sky getting far more exposure that would create a big gap and possibly an uneven field.