Premier Sports TV Deal

[sweaty craiq]

31 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

There are clearly a lot of questions that need to be asked about this deal, other than the obvious one about the size of the deal, and answers that would ideally be provided.

Let me know what questions you would like to be put to the RFL on this issue.

Please ask who chooses the fixture and will the fixtures be split evenly. Point one is that clubs will not want their best fixtures on Monday nights

[Damien]

10 minutes ago, David Dockhouse Host said:

If that's true why so you think they chose to make less money? Who sits down and thinks "I've for a good idea, let's give this to someone else so we can make less"?

They do when they don't back themselves to sell something and make it work. Its guaranteed income v actually making something work.

We see it time and again from the RFL whether that is when choosing stadiums for internationals or the way they sell tickets for big events. 

[Rugbyleaguesupporter]

@Martyn Sadler

Key Q (some may be answered after weekend depending on whether tolouse go up) 

1. What is the plan for the SL games not picked by Sky or Terrestrial partner but will have 8 camera production? Will clubs sell on match by match basis or will you be able to subscribe via Our League? Will matches clash with SL games on main tv? 

2. Will other championship games be streamed? 

3. How confident are you that value of deal exceeds the expected loss of gate money?

4. Will premier sports provide subscription data, and could the money to rfl increase if premier subscriptions do? 

5. Will our league get to show highlights of premier games or show them in full afterwards? 

 

[Dave T]

6 minutes ago, David Dockhouse Host said:

If that's true why so you think they chose to make less money? Who sits down and thinks "I've for a good idea, let's give this to someone else so we can make less"?

I suspect the reality is that the RFL realised that the OurLeague wasn't washing its face and it is better to just take the cash of £100k maybe.

The Championship has c195 game per year and they have to work out whether they could make £100k profit (or whatever that number is that Premier are paying).

 

It's a numbers game - I don't know how much it is to film, produce and host a game - but if we look at a cost of £2.5k per game - you need a fair amount of income to make that work.

If we look at say, a £2.5k cost per game for staging an OurLeague game then you can see how many subscribers are needed to make a profit.

Base don the £2.5k assumption, and a cost of £5 per match - if you hosted every game live, to make a profit of £100k you would need to get over 600 paying customers per game. And I think that would be more challenging than people think. Some crowds are not much bigger than that. 

If you did it based on just 30 games a year you would need around 1300 paying customers per game. 

The costs I have may be too high (or low) but I suggest that this the reason some PPV football games at lower levels are around £15.

I just don't see OurLeague as being able to drive real profit, unless you can make it a really attractive subscription model, i.e. by having NRL, or one SL game a year, or a cup comp etc - but then that money is diverted away from Championship clubs anyway.

If they have managed to get £100k from Premier, then I suggest it is because they just cannot expect to make that with OurLeague.

[gingerjon]

8 minutes ago, Dave T said:

It's a numbers game - I don't know how much it is to film, produce and host a game - but if we look at a cost of £2.5k per game - you need a fair amount of income to make that work.

This is just for info as your wider point is sound:

We did a bit of research at the time and, from memory, there was also a statement about how much clubs could pay Our League directly to produce/show the games if clubs didn't want to do it themselves.

In both cases you can get to an Our League quality broadcast for somewhere between £1,000 and £1,500 per match.

[Dave T]

2 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

This is just for info as your wider point is sound:

We did a bit of research at the time and, from memory, there was also a statement about how much clubs could pay Our League directly to produce/show the games if clubs didn't want to do it themselves.

In both cases you can get to an Our League quality broadcast for somewhere between £1,000 and £1,500 per match.

Thanks, I did a basic search, but couldn't see owt, but that refresh of costs would mean the number of paying customers per month would need to be c420 if every game was shown, or 1100(ish) if it was for 30 games. 

That's based on £1500 costs.

So I think it does show that it is going to be challenging to make a profit, and tbh, maybe even cover costs. 

[Gerrumonside ref]

The idea of a highlights package for the action in WHOLE division broadcast near the live games is a good start.

 

[Man of Kent]

14 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I suspect the reality is that the RFL realised that the OurLeague wasn't washing its face and it is better to just take the cash of £100k maybe.

The Championship has c195 game per year and they have to work out whether they could make £100k profit (or whatever that number is that Premier are paying).

 

It's a numbers game - I don't know how much it is to film, produce and host a game - but if we look at a cost of £2.5k per game - you need a fair amount of income to make that work.

If we look at say, a £2.5k cost per game for staging an OurLeague game then you can see how many subscribers are needed to make a profit.

Base don the £2.5k assumption, and a cost of £5 per match - if you hosted every game live, to make a profit of £100k you would need to get over 600 paying customers per game. And I think that would be more challenging than people think. Some crowds are not much bigger than that. 

If you did it based on just 30 games a year you would need around 1300 paying customers per game. 

The costs I have may be too high (or low) but I suggest that this the reason some PPV football games at lower levels are around £15.

I just don't see OurLeague as being able to drive real profit, unless you can make it a really attractive subscription model, i.e. by having NRL, or one SL game a year, or a cup comp etc - but then that money is diverted away from Championship clubs anyway.

If they have managed to get £100k from Premier, then I suggest it is because they just cannot expect to make that with OurLeague.

Interesting stuff but comparing the Premier one game a week deal vs the RFL filming every game for PPV isn't apples & apples. 

 

[sweaty craiq]

1 hour ago, Dave T said:

The real risk here is that a couple of weeks ago the two Championship games got 95k and 65 on Sky Sports Mix. 

I assume last week's games got similar, and I expect at least a hundred thousand this weekend - maybe up to double that?

That means that the Championship will have had around half a million viewers over the last few weeks. If you had 50k per Bash game then that is 300k. 

So Sky brought around 750k-1m viewers to the table but paid £0

Premier are likely to bring 5-7.5k per game x 30 = max of 250k viewers but maybe paid £100k.

The clubs need to decide which is most valuable to them. Cash or exposure. But this Premier deal is NOT bringing exposure.

2019 Widnes v Leigh at the bash drew more than a very substantial number of SL games that year, circa 100k

[Dave T]

Just now, Man of Kent said:

Interesting stuff but comparing the Premier one game a week deal vs the RFL filming every game for PPV isn't apples & apples. 

 

I didn't do that. I also compared for 30 games. 

But the over-arching point is how to make TV profit from those 195 games. How it is cut is the variances. 

If they went with monthly subscriptions, they would need an awful lot of people paying 10 to 13 quid a month for the 7 or 8 months of the season. 

[Dave T]

8 minutes ago, sweaty craiq said:

2019 Widnes v Leigh at the bash drew more than a very substantial number of SL games that year, circa 100k

87k. 

The others got 60k, 41k, 38k, 38k and one that I can't find suggesting very low (22k was lowest show on list). 

The Super League Games that weekend got around 90k and 145k

Magic Weekend got 150k (x2), 95k (x2) and 70k (x2)

Average of c50k for Bash and c110k for Magic.

[whatmichaelsays]

1 hour ago, Man of Kent said:

I get that but to x thousand fans, Championship RL IS unmissable, must-watch content they will pay for. That's why Premier Sports is apparently paying the RFL for the rights.

What I'm interested in is whether this Premier Sports is the best value deal for clubs in urgent need of cash, or whether it is a 'Look, we're on TV (sort of!)' vanity deal.   

And it's that "x" that's the question, because you're taking on a large infrastructure cost base that you need to pay back, and then some. 

Our League was great as a stop-gap. It did something that it wasn't really designed to do. But if you want to turn this into a full-time content streaming operation, you've got to do a lot more. Even at £5-8 a month, it's in Disney+ and Netflix territory and I would suggest that at that price point, you need to offer a lot more than weekly streams of Championship and League One games with single-camera views.

People will expect more content, they'll expect on-demand content, they will expect higher production values, they will expect a reliable stream and they will expect customer service - all things that people would perhaps be more forgiving of during the pandemic. 

Premier Sports offer all of those elements so actually, it perhaps isn't necessarily a bad thing to let them take the risk on this one. If enough people subscribe, you can make the argument that the RFL should bring the rights in house in future. 

But at the moment, expecting to be able to charge £5-£10 a month for Our League in its current guise is the sort of "that'll do-ism" that is harming the sport. 

[Man of Kent]

15 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I didn't do that. I also compared for 30 games. 

But the over-arching point is how to make TV profit from those 195 games. How it is cut is the variances. 

If they went with monthly subscriptions, they would need an awful lot of people paying 10 to 13 quid a month for the 7 or 8 months of the season. 

To clear 100k profit after production costs for 30 games, it would need c.1250 subscribers paying £12.99 a month for 9 months (season runs from late January to early October) or c.1600 paying £10 a month. 

That doesn't seem an awful lot to me, particularly when Our League has 200k members with 150k+ app downloads to sell packages directly to. 

[Man of Kent]

6 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:

Our League was great as a stop-gap. It did something that it wasn't really designed to do. But if you want to turn this into a full-time content streaming operation, you've got to do a lot more. Even at £5-8 a month, it's in Disney+ and Netflix territory and I would suggest that at that price point, you need to offer a lot more than weekly streams of Championship and League One games with single-camera views.

People will expect more content, they'll expect on-demand content, they will expect higher production values, they will expect a reliable stream and they will expect customer service - all things that people would perhaps be more forgiving of during the pandemic.

I disagree completely, sorry.

I am happy to pay £10 a for a single camera feed PPV to watch my lower league football team play midweek away games and put up with the less than stellar AV output because of my loyalties. RL fans will be no different.

As for "that'll do-ism" harming the sport, that seems an apt description for the Premier Sports deal. 

[whatmichaelsays]

1 minute ago, Man of Kent said:

I disagree completely, sorry.

I am happy to pay £10 a for a single camera feed PPV to watch my lower league football team play midweek away games and put up with the less than stellar AV output because of my loyalties. RL fans will be no different.

As for "that'll do-ism" harming the sport, that seems an apt description for the Premier Sports deal. 

And that's, like I said, is the real issue. How many RL fans will be willing to part with £10 a month to watch Championship RL, filmed with lower production values, on an app? And how many will be forgiving of the lack of basic infrastructure like customer service (a cost that surprisingly few SaaS businesses consider) if a stream does fail? 

The football league found during the pandemic that streaming was not as lucrative as many perhaps believe it is - and I'd suggest that their supporters are much more dedicated than your average RL fan. 

[Sir Kevin Sinfield]

13 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

To clear 100k profit after production costs for 30 games, it would need c.1250 subscribers paying £12.99 a month for 9 months (season runs from late January to early October) or c.1600 paying £10 a month. 

That doesn't seem an awful lot to me, particularly when Our League has 200k members with 150k+ app downloads to sell packages directly to. 

The vast majority of our league members are Super League supporters and wouldn’t pay for a Championship subscription. Championship games were broadcast on pay per view basis before on our league, if it was making them any money they’d still be doing it. 

[sweaty craiq]

30 minutes ago, Dave T said:

87k. 

The others got 60k, 41k, 38k, 38k and one that I can't find suggesting very low (22k was lowest show on list). 

The Super League Games that weekend got around 90k and 145k

Magic Weekend got 150k (x2), 95k (x2) and 70k (x2)

Average of c50k for Bash and c110k for Magic.

[Dave T]

33 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

To clear 100k profit after production costs for 30 games, it would need c.1250 subscribers paying £12.99 a month for 9 months (season runs from late January to early October) or c.1600 paying £10 a month. 

That doesn't seem an awful lot to me, particularly when Our League has 200k members with 150k+ app downloads to sell packages directly to. 

I suppose the big question is whether enough people feel that £13 a month is a good return for 4 live games a year. 

For RU fans - Premier Sports offer every game live and yet the numbers are still very very modest, a small number of thousands - plus they have other live sports too. 

The RFL will know how many people have been watching on OurLeague, and I suspsect the number is so small it is telling them to take the cash.

I don't disagree with the principle of what you are saying, and I hope OurLeague continues to show stuff, certainly L1 and maybe even further Championship stuff - but I think it is obvious that they are struggling to make it pay.

[Dave T]

21 minutes ago, sweaty craiq said:

Yes - I told you those numbers, although I missed the fact there were three SL games that weekend. The Saturday game had around 60k viewers on Main Event too. I don't know whether any of the other games were on ME, they dont feature in the Top 15.

[Man of Kent]

3 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I suppose the big question is whether enough people feel that £13 a month is a good return for 4 live games a year. 

For RU fans - Premier Sports offer every game live and yet the numbers are still very very modest, a small number of thousands - plus they have other live sports too. 

The RFL will know how many people have been watching on OurLeague, and I suspsect the number is so small it is telling them to take the cash.

I don't disagree with the principle of what you are saying, and I hope OurLeague continues to show stuff, certainly L1 and maybe even further Championship stuff - but I think it is obvious that they are struggling to make it pay.

Not sure what you mean by £13 a month for 4 live games a year.

Another way of putting it is £3 a game for weekly pick-of-the-round Championship Monday night rugby + highlights for most of the year. Good value, I reckon.

[Rugbyleaguesupporter]

Big elephant in room is SL streaming. Sky will produce all games next year for free. 

So most weeks our league could have 4 SL games to high standard. 

Now of course there are operational and business costs. 

I'd suggest £150 for all catalans and tolouse home games (if tolouse win) and 3 other games a week is quite reasonable or £20 for a weekend pass could get you £1.5m plus 

Championship streaming harder as a standalone- unless you bundled it in 

Two year deal might give RFL and SL time to get prepared for landscape from 2024- of which I expect App might be in better shape

[Dave T]

2 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

Not sure what you mean by £13 a month for 4 live games a year.

Another way of putting it is £3 a game for weekly pick-of-the-round Championship Monday night rugby + highlights for most of the year. Good value, I reckon.

Month sorry - typo....

Can I ask how many Championship games you have paid for already on OurLeague?

I suppose we will now see the numbers on Premier Sports, i suspect they will compare well against the RU games that are on there, I think the numbers were ok last time it was on there. 

I think the market for this is modest - a lot of sports fans have Sky Sports and can get their RL fix there. Mainstream sports fans won't be drawn to pay for 2nd tier RL. So it becomes something for RL fans only - SL fans are well served, and would have to decide if a further £13 a month is worth it for 4 games per month. I suspect it will appeal to a small percentage of Championship fans and a number of anoraks.

The way to make it attractive is surround it with content - either all the other games that season (high risk and cost), or other sports (Premier Sports' model). 

I hope this deal works out, and I am interested to see what they do with OurLeague now - I think it can be a really good companion app but we'll see.

[Dave T]

3 minutes ago, Rugbyleaguesupporter said:

Big elephant in room is SL streaming. Sky will produce all games next year for free. 

So most weeks our league could have 4 SL games to high standard. 

Now of course there are operational and business costs. 

I'd suggest £150 for all catalans and tolouse home games (if tolouse win) and 3 other games a week is quite reasonable or £20 for a weekend pass could get you £1.5m plus 

Championship streaming harder as a standalone- unless you bundled it in 

Two year deal might give RFL and SL time to get prepared for landscape from 2024- of which I expect App might be in better shape

It's an interesting point - I think the OurLeague platform is an RFL one - I wonder whether they will negotiate with SLE for usage for streaming.

[Man of Kent]

1 minute ago, Dave T said:

I think the market for this is modest - a lot of sports fans have Sky Sports and can get their RL fix there. Mainstream sports fans won't be drawn to pay for 2nd tier RL. So it becomes something for RL fans only - SL fans are well served, and would have to decide if a further £13 a month is worth it for 4 games per month. I suspect it will appeal to a small percentage of Championship fans and a number of anoraks.

I agree completely that this is niche but my hunch it is a niche the RFL could have monetised to a greater extent off its own bat if it had the courage of its convictions.

I paid for a handful of Broncos games during lockdown, by the way.

[Dave T]

Just now, Man of Kent said:

I agree completely that this is niche but my hunch it is a niche the RFL could have monetised to a greater extent off its own bat if it had the courage of its convictions.

I paid for a handful of Broncos games during lockdown, by the way.

I don't disagree, but I think the benefits are marginal, I don't see scale here. 

I'm not being funny by the way on asking whether you bought any, I didn;t buy any. But my point is you are saying £3 a week for the best Championship game is great - but you didn't do that. This is the point, us sitting discussing it at length may lead one to believe it is attractive, but I don't see how we get enough to believe that.