Sky TV deal

[fighting irish]

25 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

I'd say when the BBC show internationals / CC the potential is for it to be seen as an exciting and attractive spectacle 

Obviously hard for me to be objective but it 'feels' exciting when it's on terrestrial.... I am sure the average punter sees it as such

I say, ''come on Clare Balding''.

It's time to show her true worth as an advocate for Rugby League, on the BBC.

I think she could be good for us, ensuring we are presented by the BBC as a modern, vibrant, sport for all. 

[sentoffagain2]

10 minutes ago, fighting irish said:

I say, ''come on Clare Balding''.

It's time to show her true worth as an advocate for Rugby League, on the BBC.

I think she could be good for us, ensuring we are presented by the BBC as a modern, vibrant, sport for all. 

  Clare is a good choice her dad was an Oxford blue in the other code,so she has been brought up watching Rugby.However the BBC are having to make cuts as younger people will be less likely to buy a licence.So not much brass in it.

[Eddie]

Just now, sentoffagain2 said:

  Clare is a good choice her dad was an Oxford blue in the other code,so she has been brought up watching Rugby.However the BBC are having to make cuts as younger people will be less likely to buy a licence.So not much brass in it.

As soon as the licence fee is scrapped and they have to pay their own way I assume the BBC will sink into oblivion, their bloated self entitled leadership will have no idea how to survive in the real world. I don’t think it will have a massive impact on RL either, other than showing so many games during the World Cup.  

[gingerjon]

46 minutes ago, fighting irish said:

It's time to show her true worth as an advocate for Rugby League, on the BBC.

The end of that statement is ... "again".

She's stood up for rugby league multiple times and, I've no doubt, will continue to do so.

[GUBRATS]

22 hours ago, zylya said:

The Championship has 189 regular season games and 6 playoff games for a total of 195 games. At £1250 per game, you're looking at less than £250k to film/broadcast every single game (£243,750 to be precise).

Now, depending on how you look at it, you have several choices. I want to put aside the issue of the pandemic - so imagine that this is for the 2022 season so there's no "we have to give something for season ticket holders" angle.

1. Swallow the £250k as a marketing cost and make these games available on OurLeague. If you go down this route, it's probably also worth having some available as Facebook Live & YouTube Live streams to increase the reach - complete free to air. This will (hopefully) help you get eyeballs on the product, as well as drive signups to the OurLeague app.

2. Charge a membership fee for OurLeague coverage. At £3 per month (not entirely unreasonable, especially if you're a fan of one of the Championship Clubs) and therefore £36/year then you'd be looking at 6,771 people needed to break even - or if you look at it in terms of clubs, just under 500 supporters per club - this obviously assuming that you can't get any neutrals or casual fans interested. If you offer a free one-month trial, you'd need 7387 members (at £33 per year) but you might get more people to sign up than if you don't have a free trial. If you had a one-off payment of £40 for the whole season (rather than a monthly fee) then you'd need just over 6000 subscribers to break even.

3. At £1250 per game, you'd need 125 people per game at £10 each or 250 people per game at £5 each or 500 people per game at £2.50 each etc to  break even over the course of the season.

4. Some combination of the above - perhaps a monthly membership or one-off season fee but with one game per round broadcast on YouTube or a free version on OurLeague.

Another thought - you could also have a "playoff pass" where you could get access to all the playoff games toward the end of the season, so if you're interested in the business end of the season, you've got that option. Say, £15 for the 6 playoff games, since you're hoping they'd be the most exciting part of the season.

For what it's worth, in terms of numbers, Championship had an average attendance of 2489 in 2019 and 1899 in 2018. So none of the numbers presented in terms of minimum subscribers are completely unreasonable.

Now, before you start down that path, you'd need to decide which was more important - whether getting eyes on the product is the most important (in which case as much of it needs to be as free as possible) or whether generating revenue to cover the costs is the most important. In truth, you'd probably look to strike some sort of a balance - making sure that  you had enough free content, especially on the major social platforms, to draw new people in. Having all of this video content would also allow the creation of highlights packages that clubs could use on their own social media. I know a lot of these already exist, but you're just trying to drive the maximum value from the content as possible.

Even if you assigned £33,750 as marketing budget for free games, you could show one game per round for free and charge for all the rest, including every playoff game, recouping most of the money (and even turning a profit if you got more than the break-even points above). The number of people who could feasibly travel to a game is going to be a lot smaller than the reach that online streaming could have. For example, people who have moved away from the area for work or to another country but still have a love for their club are rarely, if ever, going to attend a game physically. But a £40 ticket to see their team play every game? You might get a customer there, and they're re-engaged in the game.

Featherstone went over to Valencia a couple of years ago and made a good impression there - I wonder if anyone in Valencia might want to watch a few of their games. For that matter, loads of new countries are taking up Rugby League - imagine a cheap streaming service for (nearly) top flight RL for players and supporters in countries across Europe. A chance to see a higher level might be something they'd really go for, especially if there is little to no coverage of RL in their country. Likewise, the chance to create new fans and thereby increase merchandise sales etc is another potential upside, especially if clubs work on marketing their fixtures as well. So it wouldn't have to be limited to the existing Championship fans.

Having more viewers would also likely increase the value of sponsorship across the Championship.

I'm not suggesting that this is a magic fix - all my numbers are "back of a fag packet" but it's got to be worth looking into, right? Even if you did a limited test run for a season - just film one game per round, show some free on OurLeague and some on Facebook/YouTube/Twitch and see what kind of viewership you get. You'd then be able to iron out any kinks and ensure that it had a positive net benefit (since I know someone is going to ask about the impact on live attendance...)

 

EDIT - just to satisfy my own curiosity, I had a check and in the 2019 RFL report, they say that have 130k members on OurLeague, which would mean around 5.2% of members signing up for the Premium version at £3/month would break even on the Championship.

Also, the 2019 turnover was £22million so the £250k figure would represent 1% of turnover, so not an insignificant amount of money, but not a disproportionately large risk either.

What about the impact on live attendances ? 

Somebody had to ask Rocket , might as well be me

[RigbyLuger]

On 02/02/2021 at 12:27, The Rocket said:

Now that Sky has given the RFL the greenlight to produce Championship games themselves, 'Clubs are free to arrange their own coverage..." as long as they meet minimum standards, I wonder whether this is an opportunity for the RFL to take them up on this offer, interview some budding wannabee `Sports Callers` and give them a run. 

If those "callers" who have abused RFL staff, and questioned decisions of match officials are used, the RFL have no credibility at all.

[steve oates]

On 02/02/2021 at 19:34, Eddie said:

It is portrayed as a northern working class game though, massively.

Massively? Go on then set out your argument for this?

As far as "working class" goes that can be easily applied to soccer.

[steve oates]

On 03/02/2021 at 10:24, Eddie said:

As soon as the licence fee is scrapped and they have to pay their own way I assume the BBC will sink into oblivion, their bloated self entitled leadership will have no idea how to survive in the real world.

I don’t think it will have a massive impact on RL......

The BBC have championed Rugby league for as long as I have watched it and have done a great job. Of course the loss of terrestrial TV and the extensive audience up and down the country would be a massibe blow to Superleague.

Why have a go at me calling me Ralph Rimmer, and then go on to make such crazy statements ?

[The Rocket]

On 04/02/2021 at 05:24, GUBRATS said:

What about the impact on live attendances ? 

Somebody had to ask Rocket , might as well be me

I remember you making a post a while back saying how you had approached some League1 clubs with some ideas about increasing their revenues from game day. You said you were knocked back because they were more worried about those ideas helping their rivals rather than any extra revenue they might have made themselves. Clearly frustrating. 

I tend to agree that streaming League1 matches is probably a non-starter due to low numbers and the difficulty in cost coverage, but I`m not convinced that it mighn`t  be an option for some of the larger Championship clubs. Either way your a bloke who I gather has had skin in the game and I feel ideally placed maybe to answer that question or at least have a go at it.

So how do you get people to still attend games when they could just sit at home and watch it.

Over here sometimes when they take games to places that don`t have a large screen they bring one in on the back of a flatbed lorry, hook it up to the televised feed and the fans can watch the replays etc as the game goes on. Yes this another cost but maybe just one thing that would increase the game day experience enough to keep the fans attending.

Ideally I think that any televised game could be watched on delay so that fans could do both.

Over here televised matches are usually pretty well attended any way, unless the weather is bad, because it is usually a match that people want to go to any way because it is one of the better matches of the round.

Another point I think is worth making a lot of fans that attend on match day go because they follow the team and want to be there in person to barrack for them, sitting at home wouldn`t be enough. However through a local marketing campaign you could get an extra couple of thousand to tune in at home, do you think it is possible that they might go to the next home game if it wasn`t televised.

 

 

[JohnM]

On 03/02/2021 at 10:56, gingerjon said:

The end of that statement is ... "again".

She's stood up for rugby league multiple times and, I've no doubt, will continue to do so.

Agree entirely. May I add two comments?

1. She has in the past (quite correctly, to my mind) commented that RL fans should not be so chippy.

2. I think that she would only get involved if her agent, or perhaps the RFL and/or SuperLeague tried to make it happen. I can't see her, or anyone else just pitching up at the BBC and asking to be involved. 

[Smudger06]

On 01/02/2021 at 00:47, Kayakman said:

RL needs something new and sexy to attract NEW fans...they had it, then they casually flipped it away but it is still there....its called the Toronto Wolfpack.   Once this Covid is over and the dust has settled Ottawa will be ready and Toronto is like a strong ember on an old fire....once the Covid is over it can be easily coaxed into a fire once again....and they need to blow it this time, Elstone should be the lead blower.  

My God the answer is right infront of everyone.  RL has the potential to go really big in Toronto and now Ontario....why can't people just see that? The stagnation and slow death has got to stop....take the medicine Oldtimers.

Kayakman, after Ottawa & a resurgent Toronto, where would you put say 3 other Pro RL teams in Canada if they were playing in the UK system? Surely anything in the prairies or BC would be too far? Would 2 rival pro teams in Toronto work? 

Canada is a country that can have 1 or 2 big teams in a foreign league and that league will catch on widely across the nation, even the CFL only has 9 teams. This is what should be of interest about the Canadian sports market. 

[Smudger06]

On 01/02/2021 at 12:54, The Rocket said:

Sky are quoting 1250 pound for " two cameras, graphics, quality commentator and guest analyst". 

" Second division matches will be free to view for current season ticket holders but will cost the wider public to view".

So to break even, lets say at 10 pound per view, Sky would have to sell 125 views to break even.

My thoughts were that if properly marketed by the two clubs involved within their local catchment, with RFL marketing on their sites and OurLeague they could attract easily more than this amount of paying viewers.

This is not even considering if the RFL took on the production themselves through a sub-contractor, or even if they negotiated to pay extra to Sky to add extra `bells and whistles` to their coverage, i.e. ramped up the quality of the coverage, they might be able to attract a lot more viewers. This would be the RFL opportunity to present the games in a manner seen as more attractive to the audience. And therefore grow the audience of this competition. Good for sponsors, good for the clubs.

 

Amen to that

[Smudger06]

On 02/02/2021 at 09:50, Davo5 said:

Yes it is but we need a decent design,I’d also have a sponsor free logo on the front of shirts similar to the NRL and on all training/leisure gear.

NRL logo has the sponsor logo incorporated into it on the front of the shirts. 

[Sir Kevin Sinfield]

The World Cup gives us a massive amount of exposure like nothing else in Rugby League. It’s poor planning to be negotiating a new tv deal just before we host a World Cup in this country. If we can’t get a deal we think is right, we should be pushing for a 1 or 2 year deal and to renegotiate the next one soon after. Elstone handing in his notice, when the number 1 reason for hiring him was to go out and get an improved tv deal is not a good sign.

[snoopdog]

Very ironic that after all the criticism aimed at the timing of Toronto's withdrawal primarily by Elstone, he now bails out weeks before the season starts and possibly the biggest year in the sports history.

[gingerjon]

6 minutes ago, snoopdog said:

Very ironic that after all the criticism aimed at the timing of Toronto's withdrawal primarily by Elstone, he now bails out weeks before the season starts and possibly the biggest year in the sports history.

He’s still in post

[Oxford]

On 04/02/2021 at 10:57, steve oates said:

The BBC have championed Rugby league for as long as I have watched it and have done a great job. Of course the loss of terrestrial TV and the extensive audience up and down the country would be a massibe blow to Superleague.

Why have a go at me calling me Ralph Rimmer, and then go on to make such crazy statements ?

Steve is was interesting to see your response to a "Drain the Swamp" post about the Beeb but championing RL?

I think a quick look at the qualitative differences between TGG & other sports' coverage would undermine that idea very quickly.

The terrestrial argument is put forward on these very pages quite often but the substance to it, in terms of evidence of impact, is scant to say the least. I'm not altogether sure it isn't just something said by people who don't like either Murdoch or paying Sky for RL, both of which are understandable but offer very little otherwise.

Only when and until some real research into the effects on the game of coverage is undertaken, all that we end up discussing is the moans and groans of Mr Angry PayNowt of Cleckedmondcaster!

Admittedly that's far better than Mr Verycross "Defund Aunty" of Warrileigh.

[snoopdog]

43 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

He’s still in post

Dead man walking

[Kayakman]

13 hours ago, Smudger06 said:

Kayakman, after Ottawa & a resurgent Toronto, where would you put say 3 other Pro RL teams in Canada if they were playing in the UK system? Surely anything in the prairies or BC would be too far? Would 2 rival pro teams in Toronto work? 

Canada is a country that can have 1 or 2 big teams in a foreign league and that league will catch on widely across the nation, even the CFL only has 9 teams. This is what should be of interest about the Canadian sports market. 

I think we are getting ahead of ourselves.   Having two viable franchises in Toronto and Ottawa is a great task unto itself.

I certainly think it is doable but would take a few years, lets see if it fully starts up post Covid and then see how things go....

The prairies and BC are too far....Halifax could support a team but the non direct flights is a problem...the best case scenario, in my opinion, would be Boston.

[Kayakman]

1 hour ago, snoopdog said:

Very ironic that after all the criticism aimed at the timing of Toronto's withdrawal primarily by Elstone, he now bails out weeks before the season starts and possibly the biggest year in the sports history.

Ain't that God's own truth.

[Oxford]

5 minutes ago, Kayakman said:

Ain't that God's own truth.

1 hour ago, snoopdog said:

Very ironic that after all the criticism aimed at the timing of Toronto's withdrawal primarily by Elstone, he now bails out weeks before the season starts and possibly the biggest year in the sports history.

Not so much irony as indictment.

Not so much the Big G's accuracy as the reason he's turned his back on TGG.

[Smudger06]

On 03/02/2021 at 00:08, zylya said:

The Championship has 189 regular season games and 6 playoff games for a total of 195 games. At £1250 per game, you're looking at less than £250k to film/broadcast every single game (£243,750 to be precise).

Now, depending on how you look at it, you have several choices. I want to put aside the issue of the pandemic - so imagine that this is for the 2022 season so there's no "we have to give something for season ticket holders" angle.

1. Swallow the £250k as a marketing cost and make these games available on OurLeague. If you go down this route, it's probably also worth having some available as Facebook Live & YouTube Live streams to increase the reach - complete free to air. This will (hopefully) help you get eyeballs on the product, as well as drive signups to the OurLeague app.

2. Charge a membership fee for OurLeague coverage. At £3 per month (not entirely unreasonable, especially if you're a fan of one of the Championship Clubs) and therefore £36/year then you'd be looking at 6,771 people needed to break even - or if you look at it in terms of clubs, just under 500 supporters per club - this obviously assuming that you can't get any neutrals or casual fans interested. If you offer a free one-month trial, you'd need 7387 members (at £33 per year) but you might get more people to sign up than if you don't have a free trial. If you had a one-off payment of £40 for the whole season (rather than a monthly fee) then you'd need just over 6000 subscribers to break even.

3. At £1250 per game, you'd need 125 people per game at £10 each or 250 people per game at £5 each or 500 people per game at £2.50 each etc to  break even over the course of the season.

4. Some combination of the above - perhaps a monthly membership or one-off season fee but with one game per round broadcast on YouTube or a free version on OurLeague.

Another thought - you could also have a "playoff pass" where you could get access to all the playoff games toward the end of the season, so if you're interested in the business end of the season, you've got that option. Say, £15 for the 6 playoff games, since you're hoping they'd be the most exciting part of the season.

For what it's worth, in terms of numbers, Championship had an average attendance of 2489 in 2019 and 1899 in 2018. So none of the numbers presented in terms of minimum subscribers are completely unreasonable.

Now, before you start down that path, you'd need to decide which was more important - whether getting eyes on the product is the most important (in which case as much of it needs to be as free as possible) or whether generating revenue to cover the costs is the most important. In truth, you'd probably look to strike some sort of a balance - making sure that  you had enough free content, especially on the major social platforms, to draw new people in. Having all of this video content would also allow the creation of highlights packages that clubs could use on their own social media. I know a lot of these already exist, but you're just trying to drive the maximum value from the content as possible.

Even if you assigned £33,750 as marketing budget for free games, you could show one game per round for free and charge for all the rest, including every playoff game, recouping most of the money (and even turning a profit if you got more than the break-even points above). The number of people who could feasibly travel to a game is going to be a lot smaller than the reach that online streaming could have. For example, people who have moved away from the area for work or to another country but still have a love for their club are rarely, if ever, going to attend a game physically. But a £40 ticket to see their team play every game? You might get a customer there, and they're re-engaged in the game.

Featherstone went over to Valencia a couple of years ago and made a good impression there - I wonder if anyone in Valencia might want to watch a few of their games. For that matter, loads of new countries are taking up Rugby League - imagine a cheap streaming service for (nearly) top flight RL for players and supporters in countries across Europe. A chance to see a higher level might be something they'd really go for, especially if there is little to no coverage of RL in their country. Likewise, the chance to create new fans and thereby increase merchandise sales etc is another potential upside, especially if clubs work on marketing their fixtures as well. So it wouldn't have to be limited to the existing Championship fans.

Having more viewers would also likely increase the value of sponsorship across the Championship.

I'm not suggesting that this is a magic fix - all my numbers are "back of a fag packet" but it's got to be worth looking into, right? Even if you did a limited test run for a season - just film one game per round, show some free on OurLeague and some on Facebook/YouTube/Twitch and see what kind of viewership you get. You'd then be able to iron out any kinks and ensure that it had a positive net benefit (since I know someone is going to ask about the impact on live attendance...)

 

EDIT - just to satisfy my own curiosity, I had a check and in the 2019 RFL report, they say that have 130k members on OurLeague, which would mean around 5.2% of members signing up for the Premium version at £3/month would break even on the Championship.

Also, the 2019 turnover was £22million so the £250k figure would represent 1% of turnover, so not an insignificant amount of money, but not a disproportionately large risk either.

Excellent post. 

Breaking even / covering costs is not the problem, they need to make serious money out of it on top ~ to split between clubs to pay for quality players. Which is what they would need to build towards in the very medium term. 

[Smudger06]

This 2 camera and graphics pack etc @ 1250 per broadcast seems cheap for guaranteed minimum broadcast standards. Would need a dedicated producer to control graphics and which cameras footage to use + a production assistant to capture replay clips for instant use during breaks in play and depending on what the commentator is talking about during those gaps in live action. 

[gingerjon]

58 minutes ago, Smudger06 said:

This 2 camera and graphics pack etc @ 1250 per broadcast seems cheap for guaranteed minimum broadcast standards. Would need a dedicated producer to control graphics and which cameras footage to use + a production assistant to capture replay clips for instant use during breaks in play and depending on what the commentator is talking about during those gaps in live action. 

These guys could do it for about a grand per game (https://www.filmmymatch.com/live-streaming) so it's not a massive uplift from them.

And I suspect we're talking "equivalent to BBC Red Button for the Challenge Cup" as opposed to "the same as Friday night Super League on Sky Main Event".

[Smudger06]

9 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

These guys could do it for about a grand per game (https://www.filmmymatch.com/live-streaming) so it's not a massive uplift from them.

And I suspect we're talking "equivalent to BBC Red Button for the Challenge Cup" as opposed to "the same as Friday night Super League on Sky Main Event".

Fair 1, there's a fair few companies like that emerging, I'd say it would be back to the 1250 though cos looking at their basic price package it seems filming from 1 camera on a 23 foot mast, would want 2 camera angles. Regardless, you are correct seems it can be done at 1250 or even less......