Is Amazon Prime bidding for SL?

[Tommygilf]

1 minute ago, DoubleD said:

I agree, it would help moving to 14 teams too

Yes, with Toulouse too and perhaps another Canadian team going forward we could guarantee certain timeslots throughout the season.

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

29 minutes ago, Chrispmartha said:

This, I think we should be looking at a couple of broadcast partners, along with the BBC of course, but Sky may not be up for that.

I've said it before  

BT allowing Channel 5 to cover some Prem games is excellent.... Everyone wins. Also the channel 5 format (with Flatman etc.) is great 

Apparently Sky dead against any free to air content.... 

 

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

29 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

I definitely think that with the breadth of SL now we can comfortably schedule any game to not clash with any other. Thursday Night, Friday Night, Saturday 3pm (UK), 5pm (Catalans), 7/9pm (Toronto) and Sunday (or perhaps 2 on Sunday). These can be and indeed should be split up between broadcasters.

Totally agree

Plenty of dunder heads though who think every game should be Sunday 3pm regardless 

[Damien]

More teams in more countries would certainly make Super League more attractive to global subscription providers like Amazon.

[Copa]

These companies moving into sports seem to pick off content on the periphery.

The problem for the established players is is they realise one day that a sizeable chunk of their content is gone.

 

[Mark S]

Maybe this is a rumour being put out to spook Sky. Something that savvy business people do. 

The bloke who owns The Range put rumours out that everyone was bidding to buy MFIs stock when in fact he was the only bidder. It put everyone off from bidding as they thought that they could never outbid the bigger companies. He walked away with £90M worth of stock for about £3m.

[Copa]

1 hour ago, The Daddy said:

 

[Gerrumonside ref]

Could be a watershed moment for rugby league in the Northern Hemisphere if true

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

If Sky lose RL then my entire SKY sub would go. Apart from the odd cricket /union bits I wouldn't watch it

[paulwalker71]

Well, Amazon have just screened a whole round of the Premiership over the past three nights - which of course is additional to what Sky are covering.

I wonder if this is what they have in mind? A 'package' that enables them, for example, to screen every game over a weekend - Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon and evening, Sunday afternoon and evening and the final game on Monday night? (And, yes, I assuming a 14 team SL by then...)

It would bring SL to a different audience, so why not?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

If Sky lose RL then my entire SKY sub would go. Apart from the odd cricket /union bits I wouldn't watch it

Yup - Sky is down to football then and cricket.

A cheeky Sky go account shared between 4 people and there is no other reason to have it.

[Guest]

I assume there are more Amazon Prime subscribers than Sky Sports subscribers in the UK?

[Oliver Clothesoff]

1 minute ago, Leonard said:

I assume there are more Amazon Prime subscribers than Sky Sports subscribers in the UK?

April 2018 - 100m worldwide. 

Sky - 22.9m (Jan 18) with 20m “pay as you go” subscribers.

How many of those 100m are actively using Amazon Prime, I’m not sure. 

[Tre Cool]

This is all hypothetical, this is just some guy on twitter (who I blocked ages ago, can't remember why).

I would be very pleased to drop Sky though, I can't stand listening to Phil Clarke (to the point it almost ruins the coverage completely) and I hate the fact so much of my subscription money goes to soccer. 

[Chamey]

It would be a massive risk with regards to visibility of the game, there's 5m-20m odd sky sports subscribers who regularly go onto sky sports and watch whatever is live. While I suspect that more people have access to Amazon Prime, far far fewer regularly use it as a 'landing page' to start browsing for stuff to watch.

In addition most pubs that currently show RL would no longer show it. Amazon charge as much as sky or BT for rights to televise games in pubs, so bar a few RL pubs along the M62 most wouldn't be bothered to spend even more money to get the rights to show a sport that very few clients care about (I live in the south, in the past year I've seen 1 Wigan shirt, and gone into 4 pubs showing RL as it was the only sport on, that's it).

[Tommygilf]

3 minutes ago, Chamey said:

It would be a massive risk with regards to visibility of the game, there's 5m-20m odd sky sports subscribers who regularly go onto sky sports and watch whatever is live. While I suspect that more people have access to Amazon Prime, far far fewer regularly use it as a 'landing page' to start browsing for stuff to watch.

In addition most pubs that currently show RL would no longer show it. Amazon charge as much as sky or BT for rights to televise games in pubs, so bar a few RL pubs along the M62 most wouldn't be bothered to spend even more money to get the rights to show a sport that very few clients care about (I live in the south, in the past year I've seen 1 Wigan shirt, and gone into 4 pubs showing RL as it was the only sport on, that's it).

Every pub I've been in over the past couple of days (I'm a student not an alcoholic!) has had the amazon games on. 

I think the point with amazon and any other broadcasters is that they'd be complimentary to what sky do rather than replacing it.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Every pub I've been in over the past couple of days (I'm a student not an alcoholic!) has had the amazon games on. 

I think the point with amazon and any other broadcasters is that they'd be complimentary to what sky do rather than replacing it.

No reason why they can't leverage the packages into mainly sky and a game a week elsewhere. I don't see how a Sunday 3pm game on Amazon impacts sky showing Friday and Thursday games one jot.

I think people fail to realise how little content anyone actually wants, outside football, Sky has.

Even the cricket is a channel of repeats plus the winter tests are usually at night.

I doubt they would even want to show old super league highlights if SL went elsewhere - which are still a source of good cheap programming.

SL should be using all the leverage they have.

[gingerjon]

22 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Every pub I've been in over the past couple of days (I'm a student not an alcoholic!) has had the amazon games on. 

I think the point with amazon and any other broadcasters is that they'd be complimentary to what sky do rather than replacing it.

I would guess that Amazon made it as cheap and easy as possible for everyone this time round. They may not do so in future.

And I'd also suggest we should be more looking at how completely and totally the ATP tour and US Open vanished once going to Amazon. People will seek out the Premier League. Most won't 'seek' anything else, it needs to be pretty much in front of the casual viewer.

[Futtocks]

Whether there's an atom of truth in the rumour, you can't deny  that

1.the public's viewing habits are changing

2.Amazon are looking for sports content

3.Prime is not only cheaper than Sky Sports, but comes with other benefits outside TV viewing

[Guest]

1 minute ago, gingerjon said:

I would guess that Amazon made it as cheap and easy as possible for everyone this time round. They may not do so in future.

And I'd also suggest we should be more looking at how completely and totally the ATP tour and US Open vanished once going to Amazon. People will seek out the Premier League. Most won't 'seek' anything else, it needs to be pretty much in front of the casual viewer.

Outside Wimbledon - nobody in the UK cares about tennis.

There is a regular RL audience though.

As I said - just split the rights.

Are Sky really going to walk away? Nope.

[LR23]

I think people are overestimating our negotiating position slightly - I can't see how we can realistically negotiate showing games across multiple providers. At the moment Super League is a brand and it is strongly associated with Sky Sports - the exclusivity is a decent selling point for them which is a positive for us. If we attempt to split the package up across different providers we lose that. I just don't think we have the selling power to make it work.

[Cookie]

Are we sure they are talking about RL's Super League and not china's football league, women's football, British Ice hockey or the proposed European super league?

[gingerjon]

4 minutes ago, Leonard said:

Are Sky really going to walk away? Nope.

Why wouldn't they?

[gingerjon]

Just now, Cookie said:

Are we sure they are talking about RL's Super League and not china's football league, women's football, British Ice hockey or the proposed European super league?

I think we can confidently say that it's a completely baseless rumour ... but it's a good starting point for a discussion.

[EastLondonMike]

SKY's attitude towards the broadcast deals has always been based on them being the biggest of the big spenders. That wouldn't be the case with the likes of Amazon (for instance).