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Record SL tv audience for 2019 Grand Final.


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2 hours ago, Denton Rovers RLFC said:

So no other deal with a FTA channel would have worked out? IMO I reckon the sport would be in a far better position all round if we had been FTA for the last 23 years. No last minute match postponements/bringing forward, no inane EH, Stevo and the other clowns, likely to have kept the CC late May/early June, more spread of the international game due to more club coverage. But yeah, SKY saved the sport and nothing else would have kept the game going.

Inept leadership is why we ended up in the situation we did and have continued to be.

What channel? The BBC ended Grandstand over a decade ago. From 3pm on a Saturday they cover the football scores. Overall there aren’t many slots for the BBC to show sport. Thursday/Friday nights on BBC2? Or BBC2 on a Sunday? 

Without the Sky deal RL wouldn’t have the money it has.

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Interested to see the Barb figures as working out the figures is a little difficult.

Last year's Grand Final was 300,033 across the two same two channels as this year.

a 43% uplift on that would be 429,000 (average, which would make the peak even higher) - yet Dave Woods claims the peak was 394k. If it turns out that Dave Woods is maybe only counting the Main Event figures then the peak could be much higher, but it would be an odd thing for Woods to do.

It's a shame we can never get the full picture due to the limited way Barb publishes its stuff, but combined with the BBC highlights we have probably been hitting around a million viewers plus for the last few weekends of the season.

 

Edit: the highest figure I could find for the Grand Final was 365k back in 2009.

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7 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

It's interesting just how much higher the GF is compared to some regular round matches and things like the summer bash.

 

What appears to be quite clear is that we really suffer during the few core summer months and they drop substantially, I suspect it is due to subscribers cancelling once the football ends and holiday season.

We have seen some regular games around the 250k mark and the Grand Finals over the years tend to range between 250-365k. We do suffer quite a bit depending on what is on other channels, I think we have a fair amount of casual floating viewers. 

If we have managed to get 400k+ for the Grand Final this time, that is genuine progress. 

I know personally speaking I was more interested in this one that many of the previous finals in recent years, so the increased interest doesn't surprise me.

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One thing we could possibly learn from the other code (who have done this but only recently) and cricket with the Hundred next year is if we could get even a few, say 5-6 live Super League games (not even necc the Grand Final) on terrestrial TV that would be great for profile.

Appreciate BT rather than Sky have the Union rights so they may be happier sub contracting a few League and European games to Channels 4 and 5 than Sky might be.  But if we could do that without affecting the overall TV deal with Sky that would be great.  My view is apart from football all other sports in the UK need a terrestrial presence for live league games (in our case beyond the internationals on the BBC) for profile.

Great news about the audience though; that's down to having a new team in the final and one from (sort of) a big City; and also bear in mind this was in middle of the yawnion World Cup so better still.

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2 hours ago, chemicmike said:

One thing we could possibly learn from the other code (who have done this but only recently) and cricket with the Hundred next year is if we could get even a few, say 5-6 live Super League games (not even necc the Grand Final) on terrestrial TV that would be great for profile.

Appreciate BT rather than Sky have the Union rights so they may be happier sub contracting a few League and European games to Channels 4 and 5 than Sky might be.  But if we could do that without affecting the overall TV deal with Sky that would be great.  My view is apart from football all other sports in the UK need a terrestrial presence for live league games (in our case beyond the internationals on the BBC) for profile.

I hope the next TV deal is as enlightened as your idea to allow a few live games on terrestrial.

Exclusivity is why Sky pays the big bucks but a handful of games on free-to-air, perhaps one every six weeks, could boost subscriptions not subtract from them.

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4 hours ago, chemicmike said:

One thing we could possibly learn from the other code (who have done this but only recently) and cricket with the Hundred next year is if we could get even a few, say 5-6 live Super League games (not even necc the Grand Final) on terrestrial TV that would be great for profile.

Appreciate BT rather than Sky have the Union rights so they may be happier sub contracting a few League and European games to Channels 4 and 5 than Sky might be.  But if we could do that without affecting the overall TV deal with Sky that would be great.  My view is apart from football all other sports in the UK need a terrestrial presence for live league games (in our case beyond the internationals on the BBC) for profile.

Great news about the audience though; that's down to having a new team in the final and one from (sort of) a big City; and also bear in mind this was in middle of the yawnion World Cup so better still.

Said it until I am blue in the face

The Premiership Channel 5 games are great exposure for union and spread interest. Why SKY can't see that I have no idea

The darts do it with itv4 and that is inexplicably incredibly popular

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On 16/10/2019 at 13:44, Tre Cool said:

I'm not sure if you're joking but it's probably true. The population of Salford is 250k and im sure lots of people in surrounding areas associate with the city too.  It probably did have an impact on viewing figures when compared to a town team like Wigan.

Edit: this may be rubbish as Wigan's metropolitan population is bigger than Salford's!

Wigan, as a town, has a population of around 135,,000, the borough has around 320,000 about 110,000 of those being in Leigh.

WIgan is penned in on 3 sides by other RL clubs, Leigh, Saints and Warrington,  out of those only Wigan have competition from within the town of a professional football league team resident in the town. Wigan hold their own.

Salford have 250k to go at with little competition of a similar or near standard from local RL clubs, but they do have the problem of having the two Manchester soccer clubs sat on their doorstep.

Salford and WIgan both face different challenges for gaining or maintaining support, comparing one with the other is not an easy comparison to make.

I would prefer it as a case of having a story to tell and the media buying into it and a lot of people in and around Salford tuning into a game they wouldn't normally watch. A postcode breakdown of viewers would prove very interesting.

Visit my photography site www.padge.smugmug.com

Radio 5 Live: Saturday 14 April 2007

Dave Whelan "In Wigan rugby will always be king"

 

This country's wealth was created by men in overalls, it was destroyed by men in suits.

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14 hours ago, Denton Rovers RLFC said:

So no other deal with a FTA channel would have worked out? IMO I reckon the sport would be in a far better position all round if we had been FTA for the last 23 years. No last minute match postponements/bringing forward, no inane EH, Stevo and the other clowns, likely to have kept the CC late May/early June, more spread of the international game due to more club coverage. But yeah, SKY saved the sport and nothing else would have kept the game going.

Inept leadership is why we ended up in the situation we did and have continued to be.

Maybe, who knows. Ultimately, you're right - it comes down to the quality of leadership. And the RFL is and has been completely inept. So could that leadership have driven the game forward as you've suggested could have happened? ... unlikely. Remember, they do still run the Challenge Cup on FTA - how's that going?

That was a rhetorical question by the way. I don't wanna start an argument - I agree strong FTA presence is ideal, in a perfect world. In any event, these ratings are great news.

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14 hours ago, Padge said:

Wigan, as a town, has a population of around 135,,000, the borough has around 320,000 about 110,000 of those being in Leigh.

WIgan is penned in on 3 sides by other RL clubs, Leigh, Saints and Warrington,  out of those only Wigan have competition from within the town of a professional football league team resident in the town. Wigan hold their own.

Salford have 250k to go at with little competition of a similar or near standard from local RL clubs, but they do have the problem of having the two Manchester soccer clubs sat on their doorstep.

Salford and WIgan both face different challenges for gaining or maintaining support, comparing one with the other is not an easy comparison to make.

I would prefer it as a case of having a story to tell and the media buying into it and a lot of people in and around Salford tuning into a game they wouldn't normally watch. A postcode breakdown of viewers would prove very interesting.

Agree with most of this but the timing of Salford's run to the final this year (though whether that is a glorious one off time will tell given the loss of the key players) was ideal in many ways.

Salford is, was and always will be primarily a football area, and pretty much a very tribal United area at that.  I'd be surprised if many people even now in Salford support Man City.  

With Man United struggling, and probably the worst they have been in 30 plus years, it might be a pretty good time to get some of those United fans into league (as well, of course they will still remain Man U fans also).

As others have said on other threads before I tend to think the biggest potential growth market for League, not only in the heartland areas, is from football fans.  

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15 hours ago, Padge said:

Salford have 250k to go at with little competition of a similar or near standard from local RL clubs, but they do have the problem of having the two Manchester soccer clubs sat on their doorstep.

Along with Football League newcomers Salford City, who charge only a tenner and attract more than 2,000 most home games. Is Moor Lane within the Salford boundaries?

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3 hours ago, Dave T said:

This is why we shouldn't give too much of a voice to the likes of Neil Hudgell who has been telling us that interest is down, or those who believe that people are only interested in Saints and Wigan.

I agree - this proves they are actually only interested in Saints ?

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On ‎17‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 22:58, Padge said:

Wigan, as a town, has a population of around 135,,000, the borough has around 320,000 about 110,000 of those being in Leigh.

WIgan is penned in on 3 sides by other RL clubs, Leigh, Saints and Warrington,  out of those only Wigan have competition from within the town of a professional football league team resident in the town. Wigan hold their own.

Salford have 250k to go at with little competition of a similar or near standard from local RL clubs, but they do have the problem of having the two Manchester soccer clubs sat on their doorstep.

Salford and WIgan both face different challenges for gaining or maintaining support, comparing one with the other is not an easy comparison to make.

I would prefer it as a case of having a story to tell and the media buying into it and a lot of people in and around Salford tuning into a game they wouldn't normally watch. A postcode breakdown of viewers would prove very interesting.

Same census has Leigh at 44k

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1 minute ago, sweaty craiq said:

Same census has Leigh at 44k

It depends how you divide up the borough, Wigan could be about 56K

Visit my photography site www.padge.smugmug.com

Radio 5 Live: Saturday 14 April 2007

Dave Whelan "In Wigan rugby will always be king"

 

This country's wealth was created by men in overalls, it was destroyed by men in suits.

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7 minutes ago, sweaty craiq said:

Never known an Ince lad who said he wasn't a Wigginner, it would be like divvying Leigh up into Westleigh, Pennington and Bedford and saying Leigh has zero population

Atherton and Astley tend to be added to Leigh, Hindley, Ashton, Standish and Orrell get added to Wigan.

If you want to draw a true little circle around the two towns for statistics purposes then ther is very little in it.

In fact if you give me the postcodes of each town that you want to include I will give you the number of households in each.

Visit my photography site www.padge.smugmug.com

Radio 5 Live: Saturday 14 April 2007

Dave Whelan "In Wigan rugby will always be king"

 

This country's wealth was created by men in overalls, it was destroyed by men in suits.

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