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16 minutes ago, Ant said:

I didn't miss it

 

What I did miss was the parity of advertising of events, news reporting of results and studio appearances of players that the BBC affords to pretty much any other sport it still covers. 

The BBC for example has 2 regular weekly shows covering the NFL, a sort not covered by the BBC and not even played professionally in the UK. compared to the one, wandering timeslot comparitor it gives the RL.

Are we surprised then that it underperformed? 

I think this is right. I think the been give us good coverage. They don't give us much promotion of that coverage. And then try and blame us when they don't grow the audience.

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2 hours ago, Ant said:

I didn't miss it

 

What I did miss was the parity of advertising of events, news reporting of results and studio appearances of players that the BBC affords to pretty much any other sport it still covers. 

The BBC for example has 2 regular weekly shows covering the NFL, a sort not covered by the BBC and not even played professionally in the UK. compared to the one, wandering timeslot comparitor it gives the RL.

Are we surprised then that it underperformed? 

Unfortunately this is so true. The BBC completely fails to promote its own RL coverage and certainly doesn't promote it to the same extent that it does it's other sports. If people don't know it's on then they can't watch it.

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6 hours ago, Chamey said:

Did you miss the Beeb’s comment that ‘all live RL underperforms slot average’? Not everything is a conspiracy. 

So the next question is why RL underperforms, and that is the billion quid question. 

By how much and against what, other sport, strictly come dancing, repeats of Antique bargain hunt in the attic, a film?

Timing in the year, what it clashes with against other specific prigrammes on TV and lack of advertising for the live games influences matters considerably. If we want to build RL to a wider TV audience there's little point having a couple of games every other month or three with a frankly joke of a highlights weekly programme hidden away from the nation at around midnight on BBC2 on a Tuesday!

Week in week out, two games minimum plus championship say on BBC Four and actul proper advertising of the sport, not the reliance of someone in the Beeb on a programme coincidentally throwing it out to their limited audience 'the RL is on tomorrow/later today' which is pretty much what happens all too often. Even when you have the weather forecast, it's at the six nations in Scotland/England/Wales it's xx weather, at the women's soccer it's yyy and for the biscuit sponsored British athletics (which gets a turnout of a few thousand and steve cram getting all jizzed up over it like it's a big occasion) it's zzz. RL NEVER gets that, not ever, and that's just one small aspect of the problems/battle..

RL viewership would increase IF it was given the same that RU was in terms of advertising/brand awareness and programme quality/time both before and after match. It certainly isn't going to expand the way things are done currently.

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15 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

When they put together a product a broadcaster wants to buy 

Rugby League is more than Super League. Sky have bought the rights to Championship RL< so why aren't they showing it? Premier Sports were. Sky bought the rights just to stop other broadcasters showing TGG, and no-one at RFLHQ has complained, they just sit on their ass and bucket the fees to SL clubs

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7 minutes ago, Bleep1673 said:

Rugby League is more than Super League. Sky have bought the rights to Championship RL< so why aren't they showing it? Premier Sports were. Sky bought the rights just to stop other broadcasters showing TGG, and no-one at RFLHQ has complained, they just sit on their ass and bucket the fees to SL clubs

What fees do you really think SL clubs are getting that should be for Championship clubs? I think it's fairly obvious that lower league clubs benefit more financially from the TV funding split at the moment than they would if they got no SL TV money and instead sold their Championship rights completely separately but then retained the income from these TV rights. You should be careful about what you wish for.

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So we are just being paid as feeder clubs for SL Teams? We deserve screen time as much as any of the other smaller watched sports that Sky show. They have paid the RFL for rights that another broadcaster had, but refuse to show any championship games at all in 2018.

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10 hours ago, Denton Rovers RLFC said:

Week in week out, two games minimum plus championship say on BBC Four

There's not one sport that gets that level of coverage from the BBC, not even soccer.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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3 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Because people don't watch it's it doesnt add value to sky's offering to advertisers or drive subscriptions.

This is the best deal the championships have ever had and more funding than ever before have been given to the championships yet more than half the clubs in the lower leagues have gone bust  disappeared or had severe financial difficulties. 

The championship has been valued by the market not failed by the RFL 

Then sell the rights to whoever wants to show the sport rather than take the money & sit on it. We need publicity, we need screen time, we need to show we are more than SL IF you don't agree, stop watching SL & watch championship (/1) instead of sitting on your cahoonies on a Sunday.

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49 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Nobody wants to pay anything to show it. 

I'm not so sure of being so dismissive to be honest. The championship has been massively strengthened in recent years in terms of both quality and size of clubs it contains. And Sky specifically do pay for it as part of their deal with the RFL.

It might not be worth masses (isn't their cut currently less than 3 million a season?) But that they can still operate on that level is a bonus as they wouldn't be driving for much. With Toronto, Toulouse, Widnes, Bradford, Leigh, York, Fev, Rochdale and other former giants in there there's the makings of what would be a relatively cheap TV deal for Sky.

If sky are going for this Sky Sports Rugby thing, then Championship certainly can be a part of that. If SL is 3 games a week, there's no reason champ can't be aiming for at least 1 or even 2 slots on a dedicated rugby channel. The championship playoffs (in any sport) are often the most exciting games in a season and it shouldn't be beyond possibility that these are on TV. Nouse and Self-belief are required.

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35 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

............

If sky are going for this Sky Sports Rugby thing, then Championship certainly can be a part of that. If SL is 3 games a week, there's no reason champ can't be aiming for at least 1 or even 2 slots on a dedicated rugby channel. The championship playoffs (in any sport) are often the most exciting games in a season and it shouldn't be beyond possibility that these are on TV. Nouse and Self-belief are required.

mmmm if a rugby channel thingy I would not be surprised to see more than x3 SL games per week... plus changing playing times and days to suit to get as many days of SL games as possible to fill the channel thingy... then were've be moaning more about the disruption to fans and rightly so

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2 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

If there is a rugby channel, and SL has Les Catalans and possibly Toulouse/Toronto I would be shocked if we didn't go to 14 and have every game live. 1 Thursday, 1 Friday 3 or 4 Saturday and 1 or 2 Sunday.

Now you’re talking.

I wonder if there is a Sky producer out there who is setting up his own production company who would be interested in such a thing...?

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What i find interesting, as an outsider, is that the current broadcast landscape is very different to the one when the current Sky contract in 2014 (?) was signed (let’s ignore the recent contract extension). 

Cable and FTA are having to look at ways to maintain subscribers. We’re seeing the likes of Optus, Telstra, Amazon, Facebook pay top dollar to lure sports away from traditional cable/FTA. 

And what do all RFL, SL clubs and fans keep saying? 

Poor us. Sky is going to offer us less money. How will we survive? We need to be ready for less money and what the pyramid will look like with less money. 

Fark me dead! If you’re running a sport with hundreds of thousands of die hard players and fans AND you can pull a casual viewership of 2 Million on FTA, that’s a desirable product. Make the product and your offer to market irresistible and comand an increase. Sky need RL far more than RL needs Sky. Why is Ralph Rimmer and Elstone not at the table with Amazon? Facebook? Because they are perceived as Dinosaurs by the market and they don’t have a clue about what the sport should look like in 5, 10 or 20 years time. If you’re funding to clubs is based on Social Media followers than you really don’t get the landscape. 

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27 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

It was a bad deal, the repercussions of it are the risk we face in the next one 

It was a deal which caught the top of the market and locked Sky in at a high rate for an extended period.

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But Sky don't really care about the structure. The deal was signed at that point, and at a slight premium, because Sky wanted to do a big confirmation of a whole bunch of different sports at one go to reassure the stock market (https://www.skysports.com/rugby-union/news/11095/9140875/sky-sports-secures-six-long-term-rights-agreements-across-six-different-sports )

Sky really aren't that fussed as long as viewers are tuning in and they are by and large paying for Wigan/Saints/Leeds/Warrington/Hull/Hull KR. The rest is just padding to be brutally honest - the other teams, apart from maybe Cas, generally don't rate and are making up the televisual numbers.

It's also pretty rubbish to claim that the 8s did many of the things you claim; that's for another thread but correlation is not causation.

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16 hours ago, gingerjon said:

There's not one sport that gets that level of coverage from the BBC, not even soccer.

How many sports that are as popular/has viewership numbers that are as cheap per game/event as RL?

 BBC couldn't afford two live games a week of soccer plus a CH match, you do know how much soccer costs right?

BT paid £320M/yr over 3 years for 42 matches/yr , that's £7.8M per game, SKY paid approx £11M per game in a £4.2Bn deal over 3 years.

BBC paid £204M just for the premiership highlights ffs!

RL SKY deal Was £200M over 5 years for SL, CH and CC games

You do the sums.

 

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7 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

I agree that Sky dont really care about the structure, they are pretty honest and upfront about that. The problem is that the structure and the deal became inextricable because of the deal the RFL negotiated. The results of that has been pretty terrible. You can argue about cause and effect but we can't separate different parts of the deal from each other or divorce the deal from its results.

The question of whether we were wrong to sign the deal we did when we did has been pretty conclusively answered. We were. The results of it have been incredibly bad and incredibly damaging. Whether we would have been better signing a different deal at the same time or the same deal later or a different deal later are obviously pure speculation, but it is clear and well established demonstrable fact that the deal we did sign, which were inextricably linked to the changes we made had a negative effect on the game and got nowhere near achieving the results they aimed for or expected.

You're talking in absolutes which are anything but.

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11 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

It was a bad deal, the repercussions of it are the risk we face in the next one

It was a bad deal because we got too much money and may now receive less next time?!

There are regular posters on here,who claimed a year after the deal was signed,that we 'gave the game away too cheaply and deserved more'.The same people now say what a great deal it was and we'll have to accept less next time.These people always know the winner of the 3.00pm at York,unfortunately they only tell anyone at 3.15pm.

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1 minute ago, cookey said:

It was a bad deal because we got too much money and may now receive less next time?!

There are regular posters on here,who claimed a year after the deal was signed,that we 'gave the game away too cheaply and deserved more'.The same people now say what a great deal it was and we'll have to accept less next time.These people always know the winner of the 3.00pm at York,unfortunately they only tell anyone at 3.15pm.

The twisted logic appears to be that it was a bad deal because the extra TV money caused us to do things which caused us to get less money next time. 

Trying to conflate the structure with the TV deal is misleading because life is complicated and not black and white. But one thing the structure did give were those middle 8 Saturday games which were relatively appealing to Sky compared to bottom end of SL matches and top end of Championship matches. 

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8 hours ago, Denton Rovers RLFC said:

How many sports that are as popular/has viewership numbers that are as cheap per game/event as RL?

 BBC couldn't afford two live games a week of soccer plus a CH match, you do know how much soccer costs right?

BT paid £320M/yr over 3 years for 42 matches/yr , that's £7.8M per game, SKY paid approx £11M per game in a £4.2Bn deal over 3 years.

BBC paid £204M just for the premiership highlights ffs!

RL SKY deal Was £200M over 5 years for SL, CH and CC games

You do the sums.

 

There's nothing in there that remotely even begins to explain why the BBC, or anyone else, would want to make a commitment to showing multiple rugby league games a week.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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1 hour ago, scotchy1 said:

That isn't the logic at all.

The logic is that we still undersold the rights in 2014, we signed a deal that was inextricably linked to the new format, the new format proved disastrous and as such the whole deal proved poor. Now we are having to take actions to remedy those poor decisions which may lead to a lower deal next time round not because of any inherent issues around us but because of the effects of the last 7 years on the game.

However as I have also said I don't agree that the situation is unsalvageable and think the negative expectations of some massively smaller deal will be proven incorrect. I think we will see a larger deal that may work out per game as less but overall more. I think we will get a better deal next time. 

However, if that payment was to provide this structure, then how are we now moving from that structure but still getting the payments?

The value of the TV deal was used to push through the changes that the game wanted. Sky were happy to get games to show, and they still have games to show this year.

So you may feel that the decision to move to S8's was a mistake, but that is just what we spent the money on rather than the £200m tv deal being poor.

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7 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

But you are trying to divorce the different parts of the deal from each other rather than look at it in its totality . That we may have signed a different deal with a  different structure and a different funding formulae that may have worked out better (or worse) is not the argument.

That we made the deal we made which was x amount  of money for y number of years under z structure is what happened. The results are what we are seeing now. The results have not been good. 

But the "under z structure" bit clearly wasn't part of the deal, because we have changed structure with a couple of years left. And Lenegan has been extremely clear in saying that Sky pay for a number of games and we provide them.

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20 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

It clearly was part of the deal because that's what we offered. That we may have offered something else is neither here nor there  we offered what we did. 

 And we have changed the structure after consultation with the broadcaster. I agree sky didn't and don't really care about the structure which makes it all the worse that we offered such a damaging one.

Wasnt the deal £xm for xx games per annum? How do you know the third factor was in there?

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