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Championship TV deal getting closer


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The RFL will now have hard viewing figures to sell to any prospective platform with our league. Do we know how many people paid £4:95 and how many paid full whack on the day. These figures then added to potential sponsorship payment, might seem lucrative to an up and coming broadcaster. I don't think I've seen a bad game on OuRLeague. High scoring and some one sided, but all have been quality entertainment.

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21 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:

Its hypothetical and I've already said thats not happening.  Read thread first. 

Don't post dumb stuff first.

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1 hour ago, Futtocks said:

The only benefit I can see in this scenario is if Championship matches also get shared broadcasts on Freesports TV. That would, at least make the coverage available to anyone with a HD TV tuner and provide some exposure to attract sponsors to the clubs.

That mnakes sense, even diehard Rugby League fans would baulk at paying another PPV provider. Ideally you would have Free to Air coverage even if it was on a regional channel and onyl cost the proverbial £ 1 for the rights. It's the exposure the clubs would get and sponsorships they could attract with a wider audience that would make this attractive.

Our League has its drawback in only appealing to the converted. If 300 fans paid £ 4.95 that's only £ 1,485 in revenue in the long term post covid thta would not work Should Our League coverage persist once crowds arer allowed back it will depress attendances as for me paying £ 4.95 as opposed to £ 25 Plus Travel + Food and drink + extras is a no-brainer.

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31 minutes ago, THE RED ROOSTER said:

Ideally you would have Free to Air coverage even if it was on a regional channel and onyl cost the proverbial £ 1 for the rights.

Not even FTA television; some sports have signed up to streaming-only contracts with the BBC, and Sky have a free YouTube channel. British Netball is getting plenty of exposure on the latter service, for instance.

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If the coverage were competent and intelligent there could be indirect benefits from a TV deal for UK RL below SL even if the contract itself didn`t pay much.

Unfortunately broadcasters tend to start from a belief that RL is a simple game for simple Northern people and adapt their treatment accordingly. Hence, they deliver inarticulate commentators, ill-informed pundits, dumb-ass analysis, inane interviews, wonky camera angles, random replays, etc. After a short while, they realise their abysmal effort is proving no more popular than all the previous abysmal efforts. So it gets dropped, until another bunch of buffoons has another go at a later time.

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9 hours ago, ShropshireBull said:

Yeah you are right.  Pro 14 got 5 mil a year. Just makes me wonder whether just building the app is way to go. 

They got £5m over three years.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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I enjoy championship games but I am not subbing £9.99 for premier sports, I've not even bought a £4.95 on Our League game yet. It's not about the cost, I just have so much sport available to me it passes me by. I have Sky, Watch NRL plus stuff on the internet and terrestrial. A Watch NRL model for non Sky games, shows and Championship games would be great but it needs to be done properly not ad hoc like Our League are doing. I would pay an annual subscription for that.

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12 minutes ago, Scubby said:

I enjoy championship games but I am not subbing £9.99 for premier sports, I've not even bought a £4.95 on Our League game yet. It's not about the cost, I just have so much sport available to me it passes me by. I have Sky, Watch NRL plus stuff on the internet and terrestrial. A Watch NRL model for non Sky games, shows and Championship games would be great but it needs to be done properly not ad hoc like Our League are doing. I would pay an annual subscription for that.

Say that cost £120. Are you saying you’d pay that but not £10 a month to premier sports?

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Just now, Spidey said:

Say that cost £120. Are you saying you’d pay that but not £10 a month to premier sports?

If I knew that is going all to the game then yes. You really have to see what WatchNRL have done with the platform. I would never have seen me part with £100 just for NRL but the platform and app are amazing, loads of shows, junior and senior games - it feels like an app for the sport. Every singly NRL game and NSW Cup game is on there. Premier Sport is just another random subscription footprint out there to me. That is just my view.

The best deal the Championship could get with Premier is some games going onto Freesports. That will give it decent exposure and help with profile. Also hopefully a bit of cash for clubs but PS never pay much at all for coverage.

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I would like to see some figures as to how much this is worth to the clubs.

 I would also like to know what format the Championship will become.Will it be say a 16 team league?Will it be the same as now?What are we looking at?

What will happen with Championship 1 clubs?

 I would like some answers so we know exactly where we stand.

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4 minutes ago, Scubby said:

If I knew that is going all to the game then yes. You really have to see what WatchNRL have done with the platform. I would never have seen me part with £100 just for NRL but the platform and app are amazing, loads of shows, junior and senior games - it feels like an app for the sport. Every singly NRL game and NSW Cup game is on there. Premier Sport is just another random subscription footprint out there to me. That is just my view.

Fair enough - I get that

7 minutes ago, Scubby said:

The best deal the Championship could get with Premier is some games going onto Freesports. That will give it decent exposure and help with profile. Also hopefully a bit of cash for clubs but PS never pay much at all for coverage.

I think the Championship clubs will be chasing cash initially not the exposure - I expect they will feel that guaranteed money is better than potential at the minute, they need to close the gap on the funding they're losing to keep going as they are

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2 minutes ago, Spidey said:

Fair enough - I get that

I think the Championship clubs will be chasing cash initially not the exposure - I expect they will feel that guaranteed money is better than potential at the minute, they need to close the gap on the funding they're losing to keep going as they are

I don't blame them mate, even if it is £30-40k apiece up front it will really help. Hopefully, the deal can allow Our League to keep showing some games too as it seems popular. It is a shame fans have to make a decision where to pay/watch their favourite sport across loads of places but we are not prepared to have a long term strategy. That means we have to take what we can get.

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27 minutes ago, Scubby said:

I enjoy championship games but I am not subbing £9.99 for premier sports, I've not even bought a £4.95 on Our League game yet. It's not about the cost, I just have so much sport available to me it passes me by. I have Sky, Watch NRL plus stuff on the internet and terrestrial. A Watch NRL model for non Sky games, shows and Championship games would be great but it needs to be done properly not ad hoc like Our League are doing. I would pay an annual subscription for that.

agree with this.. spend some time and money on the Our League app. Get it up and running properly etc. I would pay money to the game to watch that. I would rather spend the money direct to the game than get all the other bits and pieces of someone like premier sports. There is that much rubbish on across the board I dont really want to add another full channel to the mix, in fact we are about to get rid of Virgin media to go to freeview + apps (Netflix, amazon, Disney, Now TV etc) because it concentrates the telly to less ###### (and we will get aerial based freeview on only 1 of the tvs the rest will just get internet tv through apps + chromecast).. give me 1 app that gives me exactly what i want and no more and i would be more than happy to pay for it where as another channel with a load of stuff i really am not that interested in and just some of something i am and its less worth it.

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2 minutes ago, RP London said:

agree with this.. spend some time and money on the Our League app. Get it up and running properly etc. I would pay money to the game to watch that. I would rather spend the money direct to the game than get all the other bits and pieces of someone like premier sports. There is that much rubbish on across the board I dont really want to add another full channel to the mix, in fact we are about to get rid of Virgin media to go to freeview + apps (Netflix, amazon, Disney, Now TV etc) because it concentrates the telly to less ###### (and we will get aerial based freeview on only 1 of the tvs the rest will just get internet tv through apps + chromecast).. give me 1 app that gives me exactly what i want and no more and i would be more than happy to pay for it where as another channel with a load of stuff i really am not that interested in and just some of something i am and its less worth it.

Exactly, Our League have actually done the hard work to get it to this point. They now need a V2 that is a complete viewer experience platform. If they can negotiate odd SL games going on there with permission from Sky (plus full replays) you might be onto something. The whole games needs to pull together on this.

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44 minutes ago, Scubby said:

I enjoy championship games but I am not subbing £9.99 for premier sports, I've not even bought a £4.95 on Our League game yet. It's not about the cost, I just have so much sport available to me it passes me by.

Probably the only people who're going to pay specifically for Championship RL are existing fans of Championship RL clubs. So the question is - can you monetise that better by selling it direct to the customers through OurLeague or by using Premier Sports to do it? Can you do either/ both without badly hurting the attendance figures when crowds are allowed?

You possibly get a little extra exposure to people who bought Premier sports to watch something else, you possibly get a little exposure for games on Freesports from people idly flicking channels. Not convinced that results in too many extra customers either for the clubs or for their mostly local sponsors.

The audiences for Women's RL games on Twitch are likely to be bigger than PremierSports/ Ourleague, so if it's exposure without any associated income that you're after, start a women's team.

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Just now, JonM said:

Probably the only people who're going to pay specifically for Championship RL are existing fans of Championship RL clubs. So the question is - can you monetise that better by selling it direct to the customers through OurLeague or by using Premier Sports to do it? Can you either/both without badly hurting the attendance figures when crowds are allowed?

You possibly get a little extra exposure to people who bought Premier sports to watch something else, you possibly get a little exposure for games on Freesports from people idly flicking channels. Not convinced that results in too many extra customers either for the clubs or for their mostly local sponsors.

The audiences for Women's RL games on Twitch are likely to be bigger than PremierSports/ Ourleague, so if it's exposure without any associated income that you're after, start a women's team.

Thing is Jon, I would pay for a whole game effort. But I really can't be arsed grazing around YouTube, Twitch, Premier Sports, Sky, Facebook etc. I am not specifically a Championship fan but would sub to watch a combination of Champion, League 1, Women's odd non-Sky SL game. Our League has done the hard work but the game needs to embrace it. 

I enjoy some Championship but I am not an avid follower of a team so it is a tough ask for me to go to Premier and dig out a tenner a month. Like my RL Cares subscription, I might pay £100 a year for V2 of Our League - you have to keep at it and build. 

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6 minutes ago, Scubby said:

Thing is Jon, I would pay for a whole game effort. But I really can't be arsed grazing around YouTube, Twitch, Premier Sports, Sky, Facebook etc. I am not specifically a Championship fan but would sub to watch a combination of Champion, League 1, Women's odd non-Sky SL game. Our League has done the hard work but the game needs to embrace it. 

I enjoy some Championship but I am not an avid follower of a team so it is a tough ask for me to go to Premier and dig out a tenner a month. Like my RL Cares subscription, I might pay £100 a year for V2 of Our League - you have to keep at it and build. 

This is close to where I am getting to with this.

A 'deal' with Premier smacks a bit of 'easy fix' when a smarter option might be (note: might) to build Our League into something decent. Have enough free content out there (examples are mounting from other sports now) to generate interest but have live games and *decent* analysis and magazine content on the app available first to paid subscribers and then after a delay to any registered users.

I don't think the money and exposure from Premier Sports will be good enough. I'd rather see us properly embrace digital platforms.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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12 minutes ago, JonM said:

Probably the only people who're going to pay specifically for Championship RL are existing fans of Championship RL clubs. So the question is - can you monetise that better by selling it direct to the customers through OurLeague or by using Premier Sports to do it? Can you do either/ both without badly hurting the attendance figures when crowds are allowed?

You possibly get a little extra exposure to people who bought Premier sports to watch something else, you possibly get a little exposure for games on Freesports from people idly flicking channels. Not convinced that results in too many extra customers either for the clubs or for their mostly local sponsors.

The audiences for Women's RL games on Twitch are likely to be bigger than PremierSports/ Ourleague, so if it's exposure without any associated income that you're after, start a women's team.

1 or 2 champ matches on premier sports or all of the champ matches on ourleague (as now). Some none sky super league potentially, have a highlights package of league one, some of the womens game etc.. None of that then stops you putting some of it on twitch (or whatever platform), a game a week say, or selling some of the content to other people to get better exposure. But to have it all (with exclusive bits) in one place on OurLeague I would definitely pay for. 

The key is that they can own the content and resell it if they want or use it through these other channels to drive exposure, but there is an element of control that they dont have by selling the rights to premier for very little. Its different with SKY where you need to lose an element of control to get the exposure but to send the 2nd tier behind a paywall of a small channel that you have to remember it is on (as certainly through virgin you have to go through some "dead channels" to get to it when flicking through the tv guide/channels) seems to be the wrong way to go IMHO

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Championship TV rights have consistently been worth £0 - going right the way back to the days of the Northern Ford Premiership asking to exit the Sky TV contract. And please don't try to tell me Sky paid X amount for them in the current deal, the sum announced (or rather, leaked) by Nigel Wood was the clubs' distribution not the game's income. Anything above £0 is a bonus so, as others have said, for that sort of money you'd have to start considering the future development of OurLeague instead.

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Does anybody have any of the historical figures for Premier Sports when the Championship was on around 06/07?

I don't see the Championship or League 1 getting much money at all. Maybe £1m at the most. I know the clubs will most certainly miss the money from TV revenue (who wouldn't), but I'd love to know if any terrestrial channel would be interested in showing it. 

I think the game would be better having a highlights packing on ITV on an Monday evening, like Rugby League Raw (but not that raw)

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