Sky Sports halves offer for TV rights

[Tommygilf]

10 minutes ago, Damien said:

I've been making this point for some time. The last TV deal provided a real opportunity to grow the competition to have something better to sell for the next TV deal. SL could have gone to 14 teams, could have scrapped loop fixtures, could have ring fenced two French clubs in SL (and we'd have still have had 12 English clubs which is more than now), could have devoted real money to a media and digital arm, could have set in stone a mid season international etc. That could have all been done and every club would have still been better off than the previous TV deal. Instead it was wasted.

Absolutely mate, but don't worry, a handful of Championship clubs got a huge increase in funding...

[Tommygilf]

2 minutes ago, PEANUT HEAD said:

Following  football  and going watching it are 2 different things.

Going to watch it and watching on TV, as this current era shows, are as good as the same in so many respects.

[Dave T]

24 minutes ago, Damien said:

I mean expansion of the competition and taking the competition into new markets, to grow the pie, rather than expansion of the game. That said expanding the game at the top level is expanding the game for me and teams such as Zebre were formed specifically for the Pro 14. The closest parallel in RL is what happened in the Pro 14 and the expansion to Italy where RU existed at a semi pro level, much like France in RL. The equivalent would be Super League properly embracing expansion in France to grow Super League and the game in France. The returns may or may not be there but a well backed club in Toulouse, providing there were sufficient guarantees, could reduce dependency on a sole TV contract and increase the pie.

I agree Super Rugby Union got far too greedy and destroyed their competition but we are far from the aggressive expansion that they sought. Timezones and playing across 5 completely different countries were key issues that are not applicable to SL, the reason why it did this is.

Again though I think were Super League stands in terms of what it needs to do is much closer to these competitions than the RU Premiership. If Super League had more clubs getting crowds of 6K+ and more clubs backed by millionaires like the RU Premiership it would be a different story. Unfortunately it is not.

That's all fair, don't disagree with much if anything. My knowledge of the Italian Pro14 teams is limited tbh. 

[Dave T]

Just now, Johnoco said:

Even if that £2M resulted in more than that coming in by way of more advertisers and publicity? 
Price of everything and value of nothing springs to mind.

The problem is proving that would happen. 

[westlondonfan]

9 hours ago, ShropshireBull said:

If this doesnt make people realize that internationals are the future (that means building a home for Welsh RL and more French teams in SL ) then we might as well pack it in.  Rugby Union is about to hide behind a paywall so If there is no Northern Hemisphere tri nations in 4 years people want putting down. 

I thought the four nations competition was going well until they scrapped it. A number of people have said on here that there is no evidence that Toronto would increase the offer from Sky and that may be true and I can only speak for myself. One of the things that changed me into a committed rugby league fan was watching the 1995 World Cup on television. I have no doubt whatsoever that Toronto created a buzz around the sport that , with all due respect , Leigh returning to the super league will ever be able to match.

[whatmichaelsays]

9 minutes ago, Scotchy1 said:

The thing other sports have learned that RL never has is that RL fans aren't the market. Sports fans are. 

I'd go even further than that. RL Fans aren't the market, sports fans aren't the market. People are the market. 

Everything the game has seemingly done over the last 20 years seems to have been focused on "finding more people like us".

The clubs try and sell the same thing that their regular fans like to new people, and then act surprised when those new people aren't enthused. When we play games in new towns, cities and countries, we look around for more people like us. We don't tailor what we offer to those new markets. When we have clubs that do, they're dismissed as a "fad", "not proper fans" or "just a beer festival". 

Darts didn't modernise itself by appealing to darts fans. It modernised itself by finding a way to package itself as something that a broad range of people wanted to watch. Twenty20 cricket didn't just appeal to sports fans - it appealed to people who had probably never set foot in a live sports venue before. Wimbledon doesn't just appeal to sports fans - it appeals to people who want to sample strawberries and cream. 

The game has to realise that, in the eyes of most of the country, we're the weirdos. We're the small band of oddballs who like this sport for what it is. If we want to build the audience, we need to listen and respond to what other people want from a sports entertainment product - not insist that they have to like it exactly how we like it.

[Harry Stottle]

10 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

I think that was true and is true still of a number of people, my Dad included up to a point for example, but that number has declined - especially where the "local" football team is regularly televised. 

Anecdotally, you only have to go into the pubs in Wakey, Castleford etc to see that football is the default with RL being an increasingly "ask the barman to put it on" job. Equally anecdotally, I know quite a few hardcore Cas fans from my time playing junior rugby there, I can comfortably say each and every one is an avid Leeds United fan too. I'm sure you'll find similar for the Manchester clubs in Salford and Leigh's support for example. Its always a funny thing to hear them booing Marching on Together on a Friday night at Headingley and then singing All Leeds Aren't We at Elland Road on a Saturday for example.

Those pub anecdotes are for places that are in theory RL to the core and never had a football team etc., nevermind Leeds, Bradford or Manchester. Hull may be the last bastion holding out but because of my mate's preference I tend to go to the pubs without TVs there or to Beverley so perhaps even that has changed. 

It's one of the things that always makes me laugh when people are debating which of the Wakefield teams is the biggest when its obvious the best supported sports team in the Wakefield MDC is Leeds United. 

So I agree there is a hardcore of RL-only fans who'd scrap Sky etc, but in TV audience and sheer number terms there is far greater floating mass of viewers who regularly watch Super League but don't have Sky Sports purely for that reason.

You are bang on correct with the Leigh popoulas opinion, Rugby League is right down in the viewing numbers in the local pubs when compared to those who watch the round ball game

[Dave T]

1 minute ago, Johnoco said:

Well we’ll never know will we? Well...we do know it definitely *won’t* happen now. You’ll just have to hope Leigh add something to the competition that the other clubs couldn’t. 

We have more than enough evidence to know spending 2mil on a scheme like this is very high risk. Its great for us who can sit back and watch bit we don't fund it I suppose. 

[Phil]

13 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

If it wasn't so damaging to the sport it would be laughable. We get what we deserve

This, our continual failure to spread the game, greeted with huge glee by some on here has had this consequence.

Why should sky give a toss about a minor sport watched based along the M62 corridor.

You reap what you sow.

[Scotchy1]

2 minutes ago, Dave T said:

We have more than enough evidence to know spending 2mil on a scheme like this is very high risk. Its great for us who can sit back and watch bit we don't fund it I suppose. 

We weren't funding it by giving them their SL share. SL is a business and they would be a shareholder.

Even if your statement were true (which it isn't) why didn't the same calculation on ROI apply to every other club?

[Dave T]

4 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

I'd go even further than that. RL Fans aren't the market, sports fans aren't the market. People are the market. 

Everything the game has seemingly done over the last 20 years seems to have been focused on "finding more people like us".

The clubs try and sell the same thing that their regular fans like to new people, and then act surprised when those new people aren't enthused. When we play games in new towns, cities and countries, we look around for more people like us. We don't tailor what we offer to those new markets. When we have clubs that do, they're dismissed as a "fad", "not proper fans" or "just a beer festival". 

Darts didn't modernise itself by appealing to darts fans. It modernised itself by finding a way to package itself as something that a broad range of people wanted to watch. Twenty20 cricket didn't just appeal to sports fans - it appealed to people who had probably never set foot in a live sports venue before. Wimbledon doesn't just appeal to sports fans - it appeals to people who want to sample strawberries and cream. 

The game has to realise that, in the eyes of most of the country, we're the weirdos. We're the small band of oddballs who like this sport for what it is. If we want to build the audience, we need to listen and respond to what other people want from a sports entertainment product - not insist that they have to like it exactly how we like it.

Is that really how darts modernised itself? It appears to me they focused on a very specific market tbh. 

[Harry Stottle]

10 hours ago, Les Tonks Sidestep said:

I'd wager there are more folk who follow soccer in those towns than RL.

St Helens and Widnes predominantly the Mersyside Soccer clubs, Leigh the Manchester clubs and Warrington split between the two. 

[The Daddy]

No surprise whatsoever that SL has been offered a reduced deal from Sky given the direction the sport has been going over the past few years.This has now been punctuated by the not so Super 8s, the reintroduction of promotion and relegation and the ridiculous decision to put Leigh back in SL. The clubs and the RFL only have themselves to blame. 

I'm surprised that Elstone and the clubs even have the nerve to not accept the deal given the situation and the way the French TV deal went which ended up with RL having no tv exposure in France. 

As had been mentioned earlier, you reap what you sow. 

[Tommygilf]

1 minute ago, Harry Stottle said:

You are bang on correct with the Leigh popoulas opinion, Rugby League is right down in the viewing numbers in the local pubs when compared to those who watch the round ball game

Thank you, I expected as much but glad you can confirm. This is where alarm bells should be ringing, its been in my experience that case for 5 years at least (6 but I wasn't officially allowed to be there then). Couldn't comment on before then.

When Thursday night rugby League between Wakefield and Cas in Wakefield pubs is behind Chelsea vs random Danish team in the Europa League as the first choice for the TVs we need to be worried.

[Dave T]

2 minutes ago, Phil said:

This, our continual failure to spread the game, greeted with huge glee by some on here has had this consequence.

Why should sky give a toss about a minor sport watched based along the M62 corridor.

You reap what you sow.

The problem is Phil is that isn't supported by the last 25 years. Rights have gone up each time pretty much, they haven't just halved now because TWP went bust. 

When the last record deal was signed were we all celebrating and saying how well we had done on expansion. 

I don't disagree with the sentiment particularly, but there is far more to this than our actions. 

[whatmichaelsays]

10 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

In short, no chance, as we simply don't produce enough content to justify that - I think we'd be far closer to GAA figure than the scottish premiership figure. For all its many flaws, the SPFL still has the Old Firm which is a genuinely big game between 2 clubs with appeal beyond their city and league.

Sky know who watches what. The amount of people who exclusively watch RL vs those who'll watch RL and football, and cricket, and F1, and darts etc would be miniscule in relative terms. That's why we don't have a dedicated channel but those other sports do (or at least temporarily do in Darts' case). 

RLs problem again is not that we are even a northern game, or an M62 game, but a handful of places along that. When you start looking at it like that you realise why someone doing the books at sky is going to start asking "why?"

I'd agree with this. 

I honestly think that RL content, in the eyes of Sky as we sit today, is much more about customer retention rather than driving subscriptions. For the most part, I think that the market for subcription TV is very near to maturity, to the point that if there is an RL fan out there who is willing and able to subscribe to Sky, they probably do. The last major acquisition that I think Sky made that you could consider to be a subscription driver was probably F1. 

Sky know who is watching RL. There is a reason why they're mad-keen on getting everyone to connect their Sky boxes to their internet routers. They know who is streaming RL content through NowTV. They know how many hits RL content gets on the Sky Sports website. They know how many people are watching RL content on demand. In short, they know how much RL content is worth to them and how valued it is by their subscriber base. 

Again, I think the frustrating part about this discussion whenever it comes up is that it is always seen from the perspective of "how can we get more from Sky?" and that it's "Elstone's job to get as much as possible". Rarely, with the exception of a handful of people, does the discussion get framed as "what more can we offer Sky?" or "how does the sport make the rights more valuable?"

[Dave T]

7 minutes ago, Scotchy1 said:

We weren't funding it by giving them their SL share. SL is a business and they would be a shareholder.

Even if your statement were true (which it isn't) why didn't the same calculation on ROI apply to every other club?

We've had this discussion. 

The evidence is that 'their share' isn't a thing. We see the money routed into different areas each year. 

Probably not the right places, granted, but it's up to SLE where it goes. 

[Harry Stottle]

9 hours ago, frank said:

This offer will  effect Leigh more than the others.They wanted to get into SL so will have to deal with it.

Why?

[Dave T]

2 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

The last 25 years? What exactly has changed? How has the game developed?

It pretty much hasn’t changed at all. Not sure that’s anything to crow about.

I'm not as down as you, but that's sort of my point. Why now have Sky halved the money if we've done nowt of value ever? 

Why did they pay 200mil a few years ago? 

Like I say, I agree with the premise that we have left ourselves in a weak position, but the external factors at play are the big drivers here. 

Sky has been happy to lose bigger sports than ours in recent years 

[whatmichaelsays]

5 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Is that really how darts modernised itself? It appears to me they focused on a very specific market tbh. 

How many "darts fans" were there before the PDC came into being? Certainly not enough to sustain the relative giant that has since grown - a "pub sport" that now dominates a large part of the Sky Sports schedules throughout most of the year, with TV events syndicated across Europe. 

That doesn't come about just by appealing to darts fans. It comes about by packaging the sport and events in a way that can hook in people to something that they wouldn't have ordinarily considered. 

I actually think that the way the PDC has packaged darts for TV is more clever than people realise - there are lots of interesting psychological techniques used to keep the tension there for the viewers. The Hearns have done much more than turn it into a "booze up in an Arena".  

[Tommygilf]

6 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

I'd agree with this. 

I honestly think that RL content, in the eyes of Sky as we sit today, is much more about customer retention rather than driving subscriptions. For the most part, I think that the market for subcription TV is very near to maturity, to the point that if there is an RL fan out there who is willing and able to subscribe to Sky, they probably do. The last major acquisition that I think Sky made that you could consider to be a subscription driver was probably F1. 

Sky know who is watching RL. There is a reason why they're mad-keen on getting everyone to connect their Sky boxes to their internet routers. They know who is streaming RL content through NowTV. They know how many hits RL content gets on the Sky Sports website. They know how many people are watching RL content on demand. In short, they know how much RL content is worth to them and how valued it is by their subscriber base. 

Again, I think the frustrating part about this discussion whenever it comes up is that it is always seen from the perspective of "how can we get more from Sky?" and that it's "Elstone's job to get as much as possible". Rarely, with the exception of a handful of people, does the discussion get framed as "what more can we offer Sky?" or "how does the sport make the rights more valuable?"

Exactly. The only argument you could make that RL invested to make itself more valuable over the past 6 years was to introduce jeopardy and the opportunity of promotion. Based on this reported figure, that has absolutely failed.

Personally when I would say "Elstone should get as much as possible" it is with the caveat that he should be building something, or at least have a vision of something, that Sky can buy into. 

[Scotchy1]

9 minutes ago, Dave T said:

We've had this discussion. 

The evidence is that 'their share' isn't a thing. We see the money routed into different areas each year. 

Probably not the right places, granted, but it's up to SLE where it goes. 

That is how it is paid and set out. Thats why Toronto had to sign a separate participation agreement 

[Tommygilf]

5 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

How many "darts fans" were there before the PDC came into being? Certainly not enough to sustain the relative giant that has since grown - a "pub sport" that now dominates a large part of the Sky Sports schedules throughout most of the year, with TV events syndicated across Europe. 

That doesn't come about just by appealing to darts fans. It comes about by packaging the sport and events in a way that can hook in people to something that they wouldn't have ordinarily considered. 

I actually think that the way the PDC has packaged darts for TV is more clever than people realise - there are lots of interesting psychological techniques used to keep the tension there for the viewers. The Hearns have done much more than turn it into a "booze up in an Arena".  

That's very true, if it was just a booze up in an arena then it wouldn't be shown on TV to the extent it is.

[redjonn]

It seems to me many seem to pick particular hobby horses to conflate as to why Sky are offering a relatively small amount.  Its down to Elstone, loss of Toronto, Leigh being picked, lack of expansion.  The only one I would lean towards is lack of past expansion but then that was the case for the last offer.

I don't think the narrow geographical spread of RL is any different now then the last offer and hence whilst an influence it isn't changing the numbers so significantly. 

For me the major factor is Sky's priorities through their new ownership.   A major focus is clearly their goal to help globalise the American sports whilst taking account of maximising the channel usage given for those sports given the cost of the American sports rights.

We have always been a filler sport for Sky and with their increase focus on pushing North American sports more and more RL is needed less and less to fill the airwaves.

For me its more a strategic direction of Sky under new ownership than any aspect of what RL have or have not done.   I don't think even with expansion here it would have changed Sky's  strategy.

If they want to fill with RL they now have NRL - that in itself lessens the value of SL.

[Harry Stottle]

39 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

This is the corner they’ve painted themselves in though. 

I know your respect for Toronto, but are you honestly suggesting if Toronto's submission and Livolsi's application had been accepted, Sky's offer woukd have been any different?