HawkMan

Speak for yourself and your mates, but not Londoners as a whole. I'm in my 60s and have always lived in London and MW will not attract any more than Newcastle or anywhere else because of cheap booze. To repeat ,it's an insult. What d'you expect? " come on lads we're off to Magic Weekend Rugby League " "But we were going to Arsenal". " Well, I was off to Charlton, but it's cheap booze, don't worry about following the rugby we'll be unconscious after an hour anyway."

As a Londoner I find that frankly insulting. We Londoners are very loyal to our sports, mainly football, and we support culturally diverse activities including sports we don't usually watch. But we don't go to any old rubbish just to get p****d and it's cheap. Put MW on in London, probably during the football season, involving teams Londoners don't care about, but offer cheap tickets and booze and they'll turn up in droves. What an arrogant pile of ######.

My PL predictions 1. Arsenal ( b******s) 2. Man City # 3. Liverpool 4. Man Utd 5. Chelsea 6. A Villa 7. West Ham 8. Newcastle 9. Tottenham (sadly) 10. Brighton 11. Bournemouth 12. Fulham 13. C.Palace 14. Everton 15. Brentford 16. Nottm Forest 17. Southampton 18. Wolves(R) 19. Ipswich (R) 20. Leicester (R) # assuming they're not found guilty of 115 charges and deducted 100 points! Not likely until following season anyway factoring in any appeals.

Genuine question; if you can't get SS+ APP, can you still get 412 linear? If the answer is no then how can the 2 main SL games be on there, unless they're on Action or Mix too.

Sorry,my bad, I misunderstood your post. Yes it's not a fair exchange. Sky have disappointed with this change all round.

Why not ? Arena became SS+, so if you only subscribed to non premium channels, Action and Arena,then you can't keep 412 ,that's now premium, that only leaves Tennis to replace Arena. 401 to 406 are all premium , presumably you can get subscriptions to just F1 or Golf or cricket, but I'm guessing they cost more than Action and Arena combined.

Changes to Champions League coverage this season; BBC will have a Wednesday highlights show at 10.40 on One. TNT will continue to show all games live except first pick on Tuesday, which Amazon have got. Tonight on BBC Scotland ( 187 on sky) Rangers v Dynamo Kiev in qualifying round 2nd leg.

Interesting point, I'm not technically minded either, your channels are encoded on your sky viewing card, so if you only get F1, ( if that's possible), I suppose you wouldn't get anything else on catch up either.

It adds up because Sky paid the EFL 900 million for the privilege and SL 21.5 million. You work out who is in the strong or weak position.

Some people on here have said that they only have Sports Arena,Mix Action. I've got the whole package so I wouldn't know if that's possible, but I'll assume our fellow members truthfully reported their situation. So they wouldn't have access to SS+ ,but non SS+ games they can watch and record and catch up. So those games are on catch up but Red button ones aren't. But this is old hat, red button EFL games have never been available in whole on catch up , though I do remember recording a few red button games in recent seasons. I'm not sure why people are struggling to understand this. If you only subscribe for RL and have certain skysports channels and not all of them then you're not getting SS+. Quite right too, why should those who pay less than full subscription get gratis the new streaming service? Saying that you're only interested in RL so wouldn't watch any other SS+ offerings is irrelevant.

Ah...I assume you mean Catch Up TV on the main menu, that's available to all Sky Q customers, a basic service, not just for sport of course. SS+ is for full subscription sports customers only. So can't put the games there. But the non SS+ games , Leeds v Wigan are available to watch in whole again as are NRL games.

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Agree with most of what you say, but how important is any sport other than football for the success of SS+? Even as a football fan I think the dominance is too much, damaging other sports in the process. What is a filler sport? I go by which sports have their own channels, Football, Golf, Cricket, F1, all drive subscriptions. Others are fillers, Tennis the exception, that surely can't drive subscriptions, but Sky needed a channel for their new contract showing all ATP tournaments.

True, but part of the reasoning by Sky, must be to give RL fans a taste of " heaven" then get them to sign up for full subscription. Sky certainly didn't commit to show all 6 on main channels past August. Frankly though Sky probably don't care how many RL fans sign up. SS+ stands or falls by the reaction of EFL fans. If there's no surge in subs uptake then it's a failure.

Yeah I meant on the linear channels. Sky didn't pay for 6 on main channels. Sky wanted primarily to get football fans using club streaming services to sign up to Sky as they take over all EFL streaming. The EFL got a big increase in the latest TV deal. SL should have got more than a REDUCTION in TV revenues for extra games, on main channels or SS + as Sky stand to gain from new subscribers. They couldn't though not their fault, but Sky hold all the Aces, as IMG must have conceded as they presumably approved the deal.

YES, they're showing 2, they paid for 2, the others were extras to entice RL people to subscribe to the full package to carry on watching. SL should have asked for more for those extra four games, but were not in a position to do so, and reasoned that getting more eyeballs on the sport was the priority. SL is in an incredibly weak bargaining position in TV deal talks. Its possible I suppose that the extra games were factored into the 21.5 million a year deal. Such as, " we'll pay 20 million, but for 6 months we want to show all 6 to get people interested in SS+ , so we'll up it to 21.5 million. " Also must be remembered SS+ is the new EFL streaming channel, that's its purpose, no new EFL/Sky TV deal , no skysports plus.

As I said in my addendum post, the advertisements are pre booked, suddenly putting SL on a main channel at the last moment is out of the question. SL would have to negotiate a contract specifying the channels they want ,but they are simply not in a strong enough position to do that. Sky are the only broadcasters wanting to put anything resembling serious money in, so SL takes what it can get. The recent situation of all games televised was extraordinary as if Sky were doing the game a favour and SL accepting, no doubt to get more eyeballs on the game. Sky didn't pay extra for the privilege of airing extra games. If they tried that with football they'd be told," sure you can have extra games before SS+ starts to entice viewers to upgrade their subscription, let's see your money first!"

Skysports +, channel 412 is an HD Channel only. If you haven't got HD you physically can't watch it . You'll need to upgrade to HD and have full sports subscription ie get all Skysports channels, football F1, golf, all of them.

As an addendum to above, Advertising is booked in advance, so if you take golf off the Main Event channel because its duplicated on the golf channel and put RL on, that'll p$$% off those advertisers who've paid premium probably for ad space. Sadly much as we love the game it doesn't attract premium advertisers, so even if golf had less viewers than SL Sky would possibly get more in from adverts.

Sky have paid for two matches per round , that's the deal. They can't willy nilly add more games to the main channels without renegotiating the deal. Why only two? Because that's all they wanted, all they considered it worth spending. I suppose SL may be happy to give more games away for nowt, but Sky pay and screen what they think a sport is worth. I wouldn't bet my life that SL gets more viewers than Golf, or F1. Also you have to consider Sky's deals with these other sports. Negotiated no doubt by smart dudes and probably specifies how much of each event ( golf) is shown when and what channels.

The best system is a SL team gaining the least points playing games of Rugby League being replaced by the team gaining the most points playing rugby league in the championship.

Yes it does, bottom relegated automatically and 2nd last in play off with play off winner from league below. League winner from league below ( Championship) up automatically. Perfect system, better than IMGs nonsense. One reason of soccer popularity, is P+R ,fan engagement an emotional stake in their clubs as the lower ones aspire to better themselves and move up the leagues. Take that away and stagnation will surely follow.

I had an old sky box and upgraded to Sky Q in January. Really its painless and probably free and you should do it ASAP. The old boxes will be turned off sometime I'm sure. My old Box was connected to my Internet router via a cable I bought, one end in the box the other in the router. But yes you'll need Q or Glass to get SS+

To borrow an idea from Scottish Premiership football, 12 teams, after 22 games ,split the league in two. Top 6 have 5 more games against each other, top 3 , three home two away games,4th to 6th the opposite. Cut and thrust as top 4 after 27 games into play offs, semis and GF. Bottom 6 the same, 5 more games against each other to determine final positions.

Something tells me illegal streaming of RL games isn't going to worry Sky, a pinprick in lost monies. Illegal streaming of EFL games, probably for every one of the 72 clubs is something Sky have wanted to stop for years, particularly as they've paid 900 million to stream the games themselves.