Sky Sports - New TV Deal (Merged Threads)

[roughyedspud]

Actually LE confirmed that it was a cash deal. £200m will be paid for the five years.

 

 

thats what i thought

[gingerjon]

Actually LE confirmed that it was a cash deal. £200m will be paid for the five years.

 

Okay.  My apologies.

[Dave T]

Okay.  My apologies.

It did confuse me as well around the amounts that were short, but I think it was earlier in this thread that Martyn Sadler confirmed that funds will be accessed during the next three years.

 

Obviously there is the immediate £300k x 14 (£4.2m) advance to the SL clubs.

[gingerjon]

It did confuse me as well around the amounts that were short, but I think it was earlier in this thread that Martyn Sadler confirmed that funds will be accessed during the next three years.

 

Obviously there is the immediate £300k x 14 (£4.2m) advance to the SL clubs.

 

There is also dedicated central funding for academies.  I haven't read back but that presumably will also come out of this.

[Dave T]

There is also dedicated central funding for academies.  I haven't read back but that presumably will also come out of this.

It's something like £17m is for the academy and coaching funding - not sure whether this will go to any clubs or remain independent.

[keighley]

now theres a rumour...lol

No, no they are giving half of it to Oldham to build a ground and the other half to Keighley to fund their ground redevelopment.

[roughyedspud]

don't be silly....the RFL wouldn't even pee on us if we where on fire...

[roughyedspud]

No, no they are giving half of it to Oldham to build a ground and the other half to Keighley to fund their ground redevelopment.

 

i might have stumbled on a solution for oldham & keighley....we'd need the RFL's help though

 

http://www.totalrl.com/forums/index.php/topic/242014-whitebank-road-capacity/page-4

[Mr Wind Up]

To the people who keep comparing the deals for SL and other competition, this list might be of some use. 

 

I spent a good hour doing this. I counted all the top 10 programs for each channel of the week, and they all had to be above a threshold of 100,000 viewers (including Live games, replays and other content related to specific sports). Some weeks, the lowest rating for a channel might be 200,000, suggesting that there are other programs which rated above 100k, but those have been excluded because the information isn't available - that only happened a handful of times though. I still think it paints a good picture of where things stand. 

 

The time period for this covers every week from February 2013 to February 2014 (latest data). All the channels are subscription based (Sky Sports, BT, ESPN), and include no terrestrial TV. Eurosport figures didn't show up for some reason. 

 

Total number of programs in the weekly top 10 above 100k viewers, per sport:

 

Soccer: 637

Cricket: 158

Rugby Union:  86

Wrestling: 82

Formula One: 65

Darts: 60

Rugby League: 52

Golf: 37

Fighting: 8

Tennis: 6

NFL: 4

Snooker: 1

Speedway: 1

Cycling: 1

 

Some of the negativity towards Union is perhaps unfounded. Though they were helped by the Lions tour, they still did well in competitions like the Heineken Cup. Obviously things like the RLWC would have added a lot to the RL tally, but as I said this is only subscription based services. Cricket also had the Ashes which pushed its numbers up. 

 

Honestly I think that list is a fair reflection of where things stand. 

[dkw]

Do you have the evidence to back that all up? Plus it should really be averaged over how many programmes are actually show per sport should it not?

[gingerjon]

Also, to suit this board's sensibilities please add "Union" to "Rugby".

[keighley]

i might have stumbled on a solution for oldham & keighley....we'd need the RFL's help though

 

http://www.totalrl.com/forums/index.php/topic/242014-whitebank-road-capacity/page-4

 

I don't want to cause too much thread drift but the Scunthorpe ground pictured in your link there would seem to be a perfect size for either Oldham or Keighley. Both clubs really need to upgrade their grounds. Do the RFL have a fund for assisting clubs upgrade their grounds. If they don't, they should have.

 

As always it comes down to money, but that looks a perfect fit for either club.

[Cherry and White]

Do you have the evidence to back that all up? Plus it should really be averaged over how many programmes are actually show per sport should it not?

 

the figures are more than likly correct, but for all his hard work its flawed, it only counts the top ten programmes for the said channels and he states himself he has counted the lions tour.

 

if your comparing superleague then you compare like for like...

 

superleague

premierleague

championship football

scottish football

aviva premiership

spanish football

nfl

speedway

 

etc, etc

[Mr Wind Up]

Do you have the evidence to back that all up? Plus it should really be averaged over how many programmes are actually show per sport should it not?

 

www.barb.co.uk

 

All the evidence is there. I just compiled the data, and as I said it took a while.

 

the figures are more than likly correct, but for all his hard work its flawed, it only counts the top ten programmes for the said channels and he states himself he has counted the lions tour.

 

if your comparing superleague then you compare like for like...

 

superleague

premierleague

championship football

scottish football

aviva premiership

spanish football

nfl

speedway

 

etc, etc

 

I counted every event over 100k that made the top 10 for roughly 10 subscription channels related to a specific sport. Sky have paid for the rights to show the Lions tour, so I included it. 

 

My post was intended to show that contrary to what some people seem to believe, other sports do just as well for Sky as League. The idea that every other sport is overvalued and RL is undervalued isn't correct. 

[Futtocks]

There are different ways to present stats, and if you present them as if a 100,000 figure counts the same to your scale of popularity as a 200,000+ figure, then that's a flaw. 

 

SL's figures trounce the Aviva Premiership far more often than not, and usually by a good margin. Plenty of BARB posts on TRL over the last few seasons bear this out.

 

And adding in the figures for a Lions tour also skews things in the direction of Rugby Union.

[Mr Wind Up]

There are different ways to present stats, and if you present them as if a 100,000 figure counts the same to your scale of popularity as a 200,000+ figure, then that's a flaw. 

 

SL's figures trounce the Aviva Premiership far more often than not, and usually by a good margin. Plenty of BARB posts on TRL over the last few seasons bear this out.

 

And adding in the figures for a Lions tour also skews things in the direction of Rugby Union.

 

Flawed or not, there aren't a 100 Super League games over 100k that were somehow overlooked in this count. The fact is that RL isn't as undervalued as some think. They have an insane amount of other content that does very well for them. 

 

As I said, I wasn't comparing SL vs Aviva. It was sport vs sport. Heineken Cup is probably Sky's most valuable rugby union property, more so than Aviva. So a SL v Aviva comparison is, as you say, in SL's favour.  

[gingerjon]

To be honest, I think it's a good way of looking at things.  I think it shows we do have a lot of value and relative to the number of opportunities we get we do very well.

[Dave T]

I think it would be good to give total viewing figs by sport to give some context.

 

For example, just having over 100k doesn't tell us much.

 

RU could have 86 games attracting 100k.

RL could have 52 games attracting 200k.

 

There is very little context to what is being presented, and very little consistency.

 

How many games of RU were broadcast to get 86 games? Sky show around 60-70(ish) Heineken Cup games a year and BT show around 70 Aviva Prem games per year. They also show the Autumn internationals (around 10?) - plus other international tours and tests (maybe another 10?)

 

So there are around 150ish top RU games versus around 70 top RL games in the last year.

[Mr Wind Up]

I think it would be good to give total viewing figs by sport to give some context.

 

For example, just having over 100k doesn't tell us much.

 

RU could have 86 games attracting 100k.

RL could have 52 games attracting 200k.

 

There is very little context to what is being presented, and very little consistency.

 

How many games of RU were broadcast to get 86 games? Sky show around 60-70(ish) Heineken Cup games a year and BT show around 70 Aviva Prem games per year. They also show the Autumn internationals (around 10?) - plus other international tours and tests (maybe another 10?)

 

So there are around 150ish top RU games versus around 70 top RL games in the last year.

 

I won't disagree with you, but even my basic calculations took me well over an hour. What you're proposing might take a day or more, and I wasn't really prepared to do that. It was intended to provide a rough picture of where each sport currently stands. 

 

The value of rugby league and rugby union to Sky seems to be roughly on an equal footing. You're right in that SL coverage often had higher viewing figures (over 200k), and that there were a lot of Union games in the 100-200k bracket.

 

Actually, without doing an entire breakdown that would take a godly amount of time, I might revisit the list and use a cut off point of 200k. 200k is a good cutoff point because there basically isn't any week where number 10 program for a channel is over 200k. At least that will give a true measure of where things stand. I'll also break it down by sport and competition. I've got time now so I'll do that in the next hour. 

[Mr Wind Up]

Revised list. Threshold of 200,000 viewers, subscription channels only. From Feb 2013 to Feb 2014. There are only 2 weeks in the entire year that the 10th ranked program was over 200,000 (both on Sky Sports 1). 

 

By Sport, over 200k, totals:

 

Football: 431

Cricket: 58

Formula 1: 38

Darts: 31

Rugby Union: 23

Rugby League: 13

Golf: 11

Wrestling: 5

Tennis: 3

NFL: 1

 

Breakdown

 

Football: 

Premier League: 160

Other programming (magazine shows, Champions League Goals, Soccer Saturday, Goals on Sunday): 119

Football League: 62

Champions League: 37

La Liga: 15

FA Cup: 13

Scottish Premier League: 8

League Cup: 8

World Cup qualifying: 5

UEFA Euro Under 21s: 2

Johnstones Paint Trophy: 1

Pre season friendlies: 1

 

Cricket: 

Ashes: 22

England NZ: 12

ICC Champions Trophy: 10

T20 Cricket: 6

England Aus Non Test: 5

Return Ashes: 2

Return Ashes non Test: 1

 

Formula 1:

Qualifying: 20

Races: 16

Track parade: 2

 

Darts:

World Darts Champion: 15

Premier League darts: 7

Grand Slam of Darts: 5

World Matchplay: 2

Darts Final: 1

World Grand Prix: 1

 

Rugby Union:

Lions Tour: 9

Premiership Rugby: 6

European Club Rugby: 5

Internationals: 3

 

Rugby League: 

Super League: 12

World Club Challenge: 1

 

Golf: 

Masters: 4

US Open: 3

PGA Championship: 3

Players Championship: 1
 

Wrestling: 

WWE: 5

 

Tennis: 3

 

NFL: 1 (Super Bowl)

[flyingking]

Thank you for the work you put in compiling those stats. From those it seems like F1 fans are more interested in the qualifying than the race itself.

[roughyedspud]

I don't want to cause too much thread drift but the Scunthorpe ground pictured in your link there would seem to be a perfect size for either Oldham or Keighley. Both clubs really need to upgrade their grounds. Do the RFL have a fund for assisting clubs upgrade their grounds. If they don't, they should have.

As always it comes down to money, but that looks a perfect fit for either club.

come over to the oldham board and talk abit it there......good idea though ain't it

[Dave T]

Thanks for the effort with the stats! Very interesting!

[Yosser]

£200 million (?) over 5 years

 

It may be that we could have got a better deal  if the RFL had tested the market more thoroughly, we don't know.

 

What we do know is that it was a much better deal than the Australian RU have.

 

Their failure to capture the sporting public's imagination in Australia has resulted in them having a miserly £13 million ( 25 million A$ ) a year in Broadcasting rights.

 

That's barely enough to keep them supplied with Gin and Tonics.

[Yosser]

RFL TV deal 30% increase on previous deal

 

RFU TV deal 80% increase on previous deal.

 

http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/leeds-rhinos/leeds-rhinos-rival-code-s-tv-deal-is-bad-news-for-league-mcguire-1-7165570

 

The worse part for the RFL is being locked into the the new deal for so long