Big Picture

It's worth 21.5 million £ per year, which is 4.5 million £ more than Sky's original offer of 17 million £. We can thank interest from DAZN and others for getting Sky to improve it.

I wonder if Sky was ready to drop SL and giving them all the matches for less money was the only way to get them to carry on with it.

With easy metres on every play pretty much all from north-south running and a pace where the next play follows in the blink of an eye, I wouldn't be so sure. The Wolfpack had good reason to add a beer garden to their package.

Just shows how low the game's value is in Sky's view.

For London or any other expansion club to get help the game would gave to have enough money to be able to afford that and the know-how to use it wisely. It doesn't have either of those things.

So 7 weeks altogether then?

Two French teams (one with an identity which is Catalan rather than French and based in an insignificant little tiwn to boot) playing in a league full of teams from smallish towns in England which mist Frenchmen have never heard of. And in a sport most of them never heard of too. On what planet would that draw an audience big enough that French broadcasters would be willing to pay for that?

You're overlooking the fact that the game's heartland/base in the two countries is completely different. Quayle and Arthurson had the advantage of the game being based in Australia's biggest and richest city, so the means to turn things around were accessible to them. The game in Britain is based far away from the means to turn things around there and therefore those means aren't accessible to its administrators as Sean McGuire spelled out in his first interview with Tony Collins. The TV rights went down in value because the audience is stagnant according to Sky. The audience is stagnant because teams in the smallish, unfashionable, economically disadvantaged towns in the North aren't a draw to the broader public. That's the root of the problem and as McGuire pointed out there isn't really an answer to be found within the game's current structure. Administrators are too busy trying to deal with the fires which keep breaking out sue to the game's fragile foundations.

Being under the same ownership as an RU club, they've probably been doubly affected. The financial provider of both sports have likely had an impact.

They would given the right product, marketing and promotion. The success of the NFL's London series demonstrates that.

You left out 9) Handball :- GB 10) Lacrosse :- England etc.

https://www.totalrl.com/forums/index.php?/topic/384605-channel-4-records-lowest-viewing-figures-since-start-of-super-league-coverage-with-semi-final-clash-between-wigan-warriors-and-hull-kr/

Reading this again, it's clear that IMG well and truly have their plate full working with RL and achieving the aims of their contract. The game's administrators simply don't understand the magnitude of the task, they think expanding its audience will be straightforward. Notice that Rhodri Jones thinks that the game's TV audience is strong, whereas Sky described it as stagnant and reduced their offer to 17 million £ a year initially. Add to that the low ratings for C4's coverage of the Wigan-Hull KR semi-final on the weekend and it's clear that just exposing the game to new audiences as Jones thinks won't be nearly enough to expand that stagnant audience. As I've said before, the traditional clubs in those smallish, economically disadvantaged, unfashionable towns don't have what it will take to attract the new fans the game needs and now we have hard evidence of that.

They said before that the game's audience is stagnant (that's why they only offered 17 million £ a year initially), so why does this surprise you?

As @Hull Kingston Broncopoints out above, 10 teams worked well in 1995. A similar format now (based on last year's results) could be: Group A Australia, Samoa, Tonga, Lebanon Group B New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Qualifier 1 Group C England, Fiji, Qualifier 2 Cross group matches New Zealand vs Fiji, England vs Papua New Guinea, Qualifier 1 vs Qualifier 2 With semi-finals and the final that's 18 matches.

If pro RU didn't exist in many countries, their international fame wouldn't be huge. The former is a requirement for the latter to exist.

The champions get promoted now. The Grand Final winner is the champion, as it should be.

Citizenship isn't only based on birth you know. Immigrants can become citizens too, plus some countries also have citizenship based on ancestry.

That tackle count is clearly inflated. Divided by 61 minutes 16 seconds, it works out to an impossible average of 13.779 tackles per minute!

You know quite well that I was answering your false claim that pretty much all sports have the same eligibility criteria.

This part is dead wrong. As I've explained several times now, most of the team sports which have Internationals base eligibility on citizenship. And they don't allow any nation switching, ever.

What do you mean "start to fall behind"? It's plainly evident that the sport has already fallen well behind its competitors in Britain.

On the contrary I have nothing against those places, I simply recognize the truth of Sean McGuire's observations about them. IMG's hands are tied by the need to placate the current clubs and get them to accept any plan. If there's barely enough money for 12 top clubs, those cities can't be accommodated without excluding some of those clubs and they'll never vote for that.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/mar/22/rugby-league-could-go-part-time-again-warns-wakefield-trinity-chief-executive#:~:text=6 months old-,Wakefield Trinity chief warns rugby league,of going part-time again&text=One of Super League's longest,game away from the field

Reportedly Sky told SL administrators that the audience is stagnant, which led them to offer only 17 million £ per year for a renewal. Only the interest from other parties got that amount partway back up, to 21 million £. Those who think two more teams from smallish, unfashionable places the public clearly doesn't rate would add significant value to the rights are deluding themselves.