Sky Sports halves offer for TV rights

[Scotchy1]

6 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

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. 

We were told that the game needed jeopardy, we spent a huge amount of time and effort to put in place the 8s  and we spent huge sums, circa £35m  on the lower leagues.

The return on that investments is most lower league clubs have had serious financial issues if not an insolvency event, crowds at most clubs are stagnant at best, where there has been growth it has come from Toronto who we successfully killed off  and Bradford and Widnes falling back in to the championships and seeing substantial falls in their attendances but that still being higher than championship averages. Sky have chosen to not bother screening the championship, allowing other broadcasters to screen it.

SL crowds have fallen, viewing audiences have fallen. And now tv rights look to be falling substantially. 

If we are looking at ROI...

[Griff]

1 minute ago, Scotchy1 said:

If we are looking at ROI...

Now's not the time to be starting a club in Dublin.

[Scotchy1]

35 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

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?"

That is something we do really badly. One simple thing is a focus on summer. 

Sky have little to no football in the summer and had a large group of people who cancel in May and start again in August because of football. What they have done is look to other events to keep those people over the summer.

What have we done to fill that niche? A couple of magic weekends at the end of May but thats about it. 

In the roughly 12 weeks between the end of the football season and start of the next one we gave over 3 weekends to the CC and left sky without content. 

The time of year sky would love us to go big, we do less.

 

[Harry Stottle]

4 hours ago, The Daddy said:

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. 

No disrespect Dad, but apart from a name, location and a day out for a couple hundred of hundred fans every so often what does London bring that in the last one 40 odd years they have failed to do. 

And as far as France goes, the FFR has to do something to promote the game in their own country and not just expect it to be shored up by the British game, I am all for the game to grow in France but they have to show willing themselves.

[Rupert Prince]

8 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

We will never know. But what I do think is that rejecting Toronto for Leigh sends out a message. It’s saying ‘ok we’re not Sainsbury’s or Tesco but we don’t even want to be Lidl, we’re happy being the corner shop’. 

Cobblers.  Toronto had nothing to offer.  How many Canadians did it develop.  It just paid mickey mouse money for a past it SBW, money they did not have.

[redjonn]

6 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

We will never know. But what I do think is that rejecting Toronto for Leigh sends out a message. It’s saying ‘ok we’re not Sainsbury’s or Tesco but we don’t even want to be Lidl, we’re happy being the corner shop’. 

we where the corner shop last time we got an offer... no different is the corner shop this year for the current offer. So being the corner shop or whatever RFL/SL have done or will do won't change Sky's strategic intentions for sports coverage.

[Phil]

2 minutes ago, Rupert Prince said:

Cobblers.  Toronto had nothing to offer.  How many Canadians did it develop.  It just paid mickey mouse money for a past it SBW, money they did not have.

What were they supposed to develop in that time span? SL ready 4 year olds?

They developed a 9k support base, not too shoddy I’d say 

[Rupert Prince]

59 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.

In the same way that RL in Australia is centred around Sidney?

[Mark S]

It looks to me that someone has started a rumour that that the deal will be  £20m per year so when it comes in at £30m we all breath a sigh of relief and congratulate everyone on a good job. The fact it has dropped from £40m will be glossed over.

This is a tactic that is used my the Tories, and usually works a treat for them.

[Gerrumonside ref]

Are there any quotes from anybody on this story?

[binosh]

Jesus, some people on here moan about the RFL's management of RL and whine about SL and are actually sat on this forum blaming Leigh for the reduced funding when they cant actually see what's happening in the real world.

Last time we got a great deal, arguably we should have done more with it, this deal has been coming for the last 2 years and all we have done as a sport is moan in the public domain, press and social media about how much worse the next Sky deal is going to be! Why wouldn't sky low ball us?? we have talked our own great game down so much even the most pleb level Sky negotiator would be mad not to bid us in the nuts!!

Since the last deal Sky subscriptions are on the decline, they had a near monopoly on TV & Sport and now they don't, there are now atleast 20 other options for your TV & sport from Prime to Netflix and Sky are slowly losing a grip, it was inevitable that the deal would be less and we have as a sport and fanbase compounded it. you only have to look at all the idiots tagging Sky on Twitter into their rantings about lack of expansion how S**t the RFL & SL are and how inept at negotiations we are to see what im talking about.

This has got absolutely nothing to do with Leigh or Toronto.

[Damien]

2 minutes ago, Mark S said:

It looks to me that someone has started a rumour that that the deal will be  £20m per year so when it comes in at £30m we all breath a sigh of relief and congratulate everyone on a good job. The fact it has dropped from £40m will be glossed over.

This is a tactic that is used my the Tories, and usually works a treat for them.

I certainly think/hope there is an element of that. For too long it has been talked about as a reduction being inevitable rather than talking up the sport, what it offers to TV companies and the possibilities.

[Oxford]

31 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

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?

 

12 minutes ago, Rupert Prince said:

Cobblers.  Toronto had nothing to offer.  How many Canadians did it develop.  It just paid mickey mouse money for a past it SBW, money they did not have.

Like much of this argument there is no reliable truth that anyone can rest on securely.

Toronto would've made SL a more world related brand, Leigh's addition cannot possibly do anything like that.

Harry Sky's offer may well have been different had SL included TWP and evidence either way is too skimpy.

Rupert clearly you don't like TWP, fair enough. However, no one can argue evidentially that Sky wouldn't have been persuaded by Toronto more than Leigh but the likelihood is fairly obvious.

[Man of Kent]

35 minutes ago, Scotchy1 said:

We were told that the game needed jeopardy, we spent a huge amount of time and effort to put in place the 8s  and we spent huge sums, circa £35m  on the lower leagues.

Levelling down Super League with the Championship does seem a strategic error in retrospect. 

[Tommygilf]

4 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

Levelling down Super League with the Championship does seem a strategic error in retrospect. 

Especially when it simply hasn't delivered on the growth it needed to.

[Damien]

6 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

Levelling down Super League with the Championship does seem a strategic error in retrospect. 

There's no retrospect about it. Plenty of people were saying it was stupid at the time, as was following failed models from elsewhere.

[Mark S]

Could the RFL develop their own streaming service. I have put some very rough numbers together.

To make £20m in subscriptions alone we would need 167K monthly subscribers at £10 per month (which I think is low). Obviously there are will be significant costs (production, development, data security), however this could be covered by additional advertising.

This could be supplemented with a deal with the BBC for highlights or even one game per week plus highlights.

Just an idea.

 

 

[OMEGA]

14 hours ago, Rupert Prince said:

Where are they bleeding money?

Super League Clubs have squandered a huge majority of the money they’ve received since 1995. Much of that money has filled the bank accounts of short term over the hill overseas players and their agents. Other than being able to watch a few gifted players how has that helped the game over here? On the other side of the coin, it’s incalculable how many potentially good home grown players have been denied their chance to establish themselves.

Back to the money, I can’t think of a single club who has used the SKY money to build a lasting legacy that will serve them and the game for years to come or has used the money to help future proof themselves.

In the majority the clubs are no better off today than they were 25 years ago.

[Davo5]

31 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

No disrespect Dad, but apart from a name, location and a day out for a couple hundred of hundred fans every so often what does London bring that in the last one 40 odd years they have failed to do. 

And as far as France goes, the FFR gas to do something to promote the game in theur own country and not just expect it to be shored up the British game, I am all for the game to grow in France but the have to show willing themselves.

What do we do to promote the game nationally,are we not shored up by Sky ?

[Tommygilf]

2 minutes ago, OMEGA said:

Super League Clubs have squandered a huge majority of the money they’ve received since 1995. Much of that money has filled the bank accounts of short term over the hill overseas players and their agents. Other than being able to watch a few gifted players how has that helped the game over here? On the other side of the coin, it’s incalculable how many potentially good home grown players have been denied their chance to establish themselves.

Back to the money, I can’t think of a single club who has used the SKY money to build a lasting legacy that will serve them and the game for years to come or has used the money to help future proof themselves.

In the majority the clubs are no better off today than they were 25 years ago.

Leeds, Warrington and Saints are the only clubs that own their own grounds and have modern facilities. (Huddersfield co own I guess so them too).

[Tommygilf]

5 minutes ago, Mark S said:

Could the RFL develop their own streaming service. I have put some very rough numbers together.

To make £20m in subscriptions alone we would need 167K monthly subscribers at £10 per month (which I think is low). Obviously there are will be significant costs (production, development, data security), however this could be covered by additional advertising.

This could be supplemented with a deal with the BBC for highlights or even one game per week plus highlights.

Just an idea.

Not a chance mate sadly. There's nowhere near enough demand (our fault) for RL specific content. 

RL has a pretty consistent audience on Sky, how much of that is down to the Sky platform vs hardcore RL fans who knows...

[whatmichaelsays]

11 minutes ago, OMEGA said:

Super League Clubs have squandered a huge majority of the money they’ve received since 1995. Much of that money has filled the bank accounts of short term over the hill overseas players and their agents.

If you're looking for the answer to the question "where has all the money gone?", I'm not sure that a group of people who have been subjected to real-terms pay cuts for 20 years is the place to start. 

[Phil]

40 minutes ago, Rupert Prince said:

In the same way that RL in Australia is centred around Sidney?

No not in that way at all, Sydney is one of the great cities of the world and RL is already the top sport in Oz 

[whatmichaelsays]

1 hour ago, Scotchy1 said:

That is something we do really badly. One simple thing is a focus on summer. 

Sky have little to no football in the summer and had a large group of people who cancel in May and start again in August because of football. What they have done is look to other events to keep those people over the summer.

What have we done to fill that niche? A couple of magic weekends at the end of May but thats about it. 

In the roughly 12 weeks between the end of the football season and start of the next one we gave over 3 weekends to the CC and left sky without content. 

The time of year sky would love us to go big, we do less.

 

To be fair, that's a point I hadn't thought about, but it is a good one. 

My main issue is that I don't think RL has responded to changing viewer habits. 

Let's be honest here, for large parts of the season, watching RL can be a bit of a slog. We know that, because we have phrases like "it's one for the purists" and we also have phrases like "a great advert for the game" (which suggests that most games that don't fit either description are rather unremarkable). The truth is that in a multi-channel, multi-screen environment, you can't afford to have too many of those "one for the purists" games and you can't afford to not have enough of the "great advert" games. 

I said previously that I thought darts was quite clever in how it presents itself and I think this is the context I'm talking about. In darts, the top scores happen frequently enough, and important doubles are hit or missed frequently enough, that the commentators always have something to sound excited about. There is always something for the crowd to stand up for. Whenever a leg opens up with a top score, that little '9' appears on screen to tell you that something big might happen - a really clever trick of TV psychology. In short, what they've done is package lots of short, frequent bursts of excitement that happen frequently enough to keep your attention. In truth, what the PDC did was get the players better so that they produced more of those moments, and they enhanced the TV branding / packaging so that it looked like an arena sport, rather than a tap-room sport. 

T20 pulls the same trick - regular fours, sixes and wickets that are designed to keep the excitement there and build the tension throughout the innings. The whole structure of the game (and the upcoming Hundred) is designed to make you think that every ball could either be a six or a wicket, rather than a bat away for a dot ball. 

Soccer Saturday is another example. Soccer Saturday is just watching blokes watching a TV that you can't see - if you pitched that idea to a TV exec, you'd be laughed out of the room. But it works, because it only focuses on the exciting parts of the match. NFL RedZone does the same for American Football - you only see the game when it looks like something exciting is going to happen. 

Super League doesn't have enough of those moments. Yes, you can have moments of brilliance, but for the most part, they're the exception rather than the norm. Of the 80 minutes you sit through, 75 of them are probably sat through an attritional forward battle. Of the other five, maybe two of them are Instagram-worthy. 

In today's TV market, you need more of that. It's why I'm a big advocate of short-form concepts like Nines and why I'm a big fan of fewer, more intense games - because there is absolutely zero marketable value in an increased quantity of unremarkable games producing a lot of content that people won't care about. 

[Scotchy1]

28 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

To be fair, that's a point I hadn't thought about, but it is a good one. 

My main issue is that I don't think RL has responded to changing viewer habits. 

Let's be honest here, for large parts of the season, watching RL can be a bit of a slog. We know that, because we have phrases like "it's one for the purists" and we also have phrases like "a great advert for the game" (which suggests that most games that don't fit either description are rather unremarkable). The truth is that in a multi-channel, multi-screen environment, you can't afford to have too many of those "one for the purists" games and you can't afford to not have enough of the "great advert" games. 

I said previously that I thought darts was quite clever in how it presents itself and I think this is the context I'm talking about. In darts, the top scores happen frequently enough, and important doubles are hit or missed frequently enough, that the commentators always have something to sound excited about. There is always something for the crowd to stand up for. Whenever a leg opens up with a top score, that little '9' appears on screen to tell you that something big might happen - a really clever trick of TV psychology. In short, what they've done is package lots of short, frequent bursts of excitement that happen frequently enough to keep your attention. 

T20 pulls the same trick - regular fours, sixes and wickets that are designed to keep the excitement there and build the tension throughout the innings. The whole structure of the game (and the upcoming Hundred) is designed to make you think that every ball could either be a six or a wicket, rather than a bat away for a dot ball. 

Soccer Saturday is another example. Soccer Saturday is just watching blokes watching a TV that you can't see - if you pitched that idea to a TV exec, you'd be laughed out of the room. But it works, because it only focuses on the exciting parts of the match. NFL RedZone does the same for American Football - you only see the game when it looks like something exciting is going to happen. 

Super League doesn't have enough of those moments. Yes, you can have moments of brilliance, but for the most part, they're the exception rather than the norm. Of the 80 minutes you sit through, 75 of them are probably sat through an attritional forward battle. Of the other five, maybe two of them are Instagram-worthy. 

In today's TV market, you need more of that. It's why I'm a big advocate of short-form concepts like Nines and why I'm a big fan of fewer, more intense games - because there is absolutely zero marketable value in an increased quantity of unremarkable games producing a lot of content that people won't care about. 

I think that's largely right and it is the same in all sports 

Rl has been particularly bad on the stats front  its hard for a casual fan or outsider to identify good. Its presentation in all aspects is really bad. It presents itself as so simple its easy when it really isn't. We need far better presentation  of tactics and skills and differentiation.  

Where darts and t20 have succeeded is creating a sense of occasion that means when the action isn't the best its less of an issue. We seem actively hostile to doing that 

The darts over Christmas/new year is big, its fun, and it's presented as the pinnacle. People get in to it out of a sense of occasion.

T20 is the same.

I've said before boxing day would would be ideal to start the cc with a group stage. People are in that Turkey fueled baileys for breakfast fugue state looking for things to watch. Live RL on the BBC can be that thing. You can have games every day, fans like to attend and it gives that comp an identity and defines it as an event. 

Summer is similar, its perfect for a Super League Summer Series, some big bold brash events. 

9s can reach people who can't be reached by 13s right now. But there is outright hostility to it in the game. Mention it on these boards and its like you have personally attacked peoples heritage.

RL is a hard game to get into. There is a weird purity test we make people go through. 

"You will like watching small northern towns play full contact 13s from a crumbling terrace or you won't watch at all"