RLWC - TV viewing figures

[The Masked Poster]

1 hour ago, Bedford Roughyed said:

It means the BBC are extremely happy/surprised with the viewers/interest, and have such changed their schedule to accommodate.  

I don't think anyone would see this as a bad thing though? 

[The Masked Poster]

31 minutes ago, Mr Frisky said:

Wow, for a RL fan you sure do your best to hide it.

It was 32,000 in the Nou Camp by the way - not bad for a French and English team playing in a neutral venue in a different county.

What are you on about? I was talking about a regular Barcelona game, not the Catalan V Wire game. If 23000 turned up at the NC, it would be commented on. 

As for your not being a RL fan, I'll treat that with the contempt it deserves. 

 

You want the Kool Aid Kids..... they are over there ------>

[Mr Frisky]

3 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

What are you on about? I was talking about a regular Barcelona game, not the Catalan V Wire game. If 23000 turned up at the NC, it would be commented on. 

As for your not being a RL fan, I'll treat that with the contempt it deserves. 

 

You want the Kool Aid Kids..... they are over there ------>

I said you were a RL fan......

See you on Saturday at the semi final.

[Dave T]

 

 

[The Masked Poster]

20 minutes ago, Mr Frisky said:

I said you were a RL fan......

See you on Saturday at the semi final.

I had hoped to get to the semi but I can't go to any games in this WC as it happens. This is for my personal reasons. 

Suffice to say, I've done my bit in attending RL games, big and small. 

[OriginalMrC]

So this fantastically positive news is still being turned into a negative by some? The coverage of this world cup has been truly fantastic (remember Premier Sports anyone?) and will certainly helped gain lots of new fans. 

The viewing figures are so positive it has surely made TV execs sit up and notice. 700,000 for the Wheelchair game is astonishing really. Bet the BBC were very surprised, hence the change to their schedules! 

[Mr Frisky]

16 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

I had hoped to get to the semi but I can't go to any games in this WC as it happens. This is for my personal reasons. 

Suffice to say, I've done my bit in attending RL games, big and small. 

Ok mate, fair enough, just put some cream on it and keep your legs in the air for a couple of hours and you should be fine.

[The Masked Poster]

Just now, OriginalMrC said:

So this fantastically positive news is still being turned into a negative by some? The coverage of this world cup has been truly fantastic (remember Premier Sports anyone?) and will certainly helped gain lots of new fans. 

The viewing figures are so positive it has surely made TV execs sit up and notice. 700,000 for the Wheelchair game is astonishing really. Bet the BBC were very surprised, hence the change to their schedules! 

You're correct in that the figures seem decent enough and it seems they are genuinely treating it well, as opposed to times in the past when it's been treated pretty shabbily.

But I don't think pretending that viewing figures alone mean that crowds are irrelevant. Far from it. 

It's not a soap opera or something, it's a sports event -  how many people are present and at the event makes a difference. 

[The Masked Poster]

Just now, Mr Frisky said:

Ok mate, fair enough, just put some cream on it and keep your legs in the air for a couple of hours and you should be fine.

You've no idea what the problem is so kindly butt out with 'hilarious' comments thanks. 

[Mr Frisky]

1 minute ago, The Masked Poster said:

You've no idea what the problem is so kindly butt out with 'hilarious' comments thanks. 

Nice joke as a come back - well done mate.

[The Masked Poster]

11 minutes ago, Mr Frisky said:

Nice joke as a come back - well done mate.

See you around perhaps. 

Bye

[The Masked Poster]

1 hour ago, Man of Kent said:

Crowds don’t really matter compared to TV, chief. So last century but one.

Not sure even you truly believe that. But even if your claim was true, the TV figures aren't *that* incredible. 

Reading back though, it appears you were assuring everyone that London Broncos moving to Wimbledon would be a resounding success. So I aren't sure you are quite as knowledgeable as you like to make out. 

Chief. 

[Toby Chopra]

18 minutes ago, OriginalMrC said:

So this fantastically positive news is still being turned into a negative by some? The coverage of this world cup has been truly fantastic (remember Premier Sports anyone?) and will certainly helped gain lots of new fans. 

The viewing figures are so positive it has surely made TV execs sit up and notice. 700,000 for the Wheelchair game is astonishing really. Bet the BBC were very surprised, hence the change to their schedules! 

Let's not get carried away just yet, the viewing figures are decent but not spectacular. 

For the mens games, we haven't yet exceeded the peaks we've hit in recent years for challenge cup finals or other internationals, which is slightly disappointing, but hopefully we'll hit that on Saturday, and exceed it for the final. 

The wheelchair numbers are good in the sense that there is an audience for this great sport, but what I'd be interested in is, is that audience, and that of the women's tournament, a subset of those who are watching the mens games, or are there actual new, different groups being attracted to those events?

I don't think anyone, including the BBC, knows the full answer to that yet, so some analysis will have to be done. 

Overall, looking at the numbers, I think weve done a good job in activating all the fans who've shown interest in watching RL in the recent past, and furthermore lots of them are keen to access a large amount of the content that's being shown. So we're delivering volume, and serving the existing RL audience well. This is not to be sniffed at, and may well help season tickets etc for 2023 amongst current and lapsed fans. 

But I've yet to see any evidence in the TV numbers of a cut through to previously untapped audiences (although some of that might eventually show up in the wheelchair and women's games) 

[JohnM]

14 hours ago, The Masked Poster said:

Don't talk ridiculous. Crowds are a very important part of the whole experience. 

It is great coverage yes but if a large percentage of those people watching are going to be given the impression that it's an unpopular sport that can't even attract big crowds in it's heartlands, then it's a negative.

If people didn't notice crowds they wouldn't take the pee out of Man City and call it the Emptyhad.  

Capacity 53, 500.

Average attendance around 51, 000.

[RayCee]

SkySport in NZ have monopolised sports events for years. This time SparkSport got the rights for the RL WC. Spark do their coverage online, you sign up for one month periods or longer.. I would have missed the WC on Sky but been watching it all on Spark. I've never watched so much RL in my life. 

I presume Sky's offer wasn’t good enough and lost out. 

[Dunbar]

13 hours ago, Dave T said:

Looking at the videos posted on Twitter by RLWC it's interesting to see that the viral videos of the last 10 days are not the big hits, or the tries, or the fancy plays from the big mens games. 

1.4m for Samoa v Tonga pre-match

176k wheelchair action

141k wheelchair clip

110k for Fiji hymn

60k Fiji Hymn

40k Spain v Ireland wheelchair

32k England women

26k Princess of Wales

25k NZ women haka

25k Wheelchair rugby league clip

18k PNG try v Wales

 

 

It absolutely shows the importance of diverse experiences as part of the sport.

I consider myself a pretty diehard Rugby League fan and I have absolutely no interest in 5 of the things on that list and yet they are the most watched Twitter clips and I celebrate that.

[Dave T]

The TV rights piece is quite interesting. It's always been very up and down

1995 - BBC staged a few games, we managed to get others on LiveTV, a small cable channel. 

2000 - BBC had some games (more than 1995), and Sky joint covered. 

2008 - All Sky

2013 - BBC had some games, the rest on Premier Sports

2017 - BBC had some games, the rest on Premier Sports

2021 - every game live on BBC. 

What the above doesn't show is how the RFL made a conscious (dare I say it, strategic) decision to move from pay TV for internationals to the BBC. This was around 12 years or so ago during the 4N. Previously all of these tournaments had been on Sky, we then started to put England games on the BBC. This meant Sky ended up sacking off internationals, and we moved our tournaments to them. 

And now here we are 12 years later with the BBC taking the comp seriously at a level that they have never done before for RL. 

I'm still not sure that we are making the millions from TV rights that we maybe could, and I definitely don't think we are optimising commercial income from the exposure we can offer - but it is refreshing to see a long term approach start to pay off. I wonder if we will look back at the Channel 4 move as the starting point of a new era. 

[Archie Gordon]

One thing that we haven't done is break through on BBC1 - either in terms of games on that channel or, when there, pushing well past 2m. I think we actually had one more game on BBC1 in 2013 than this time around.

But hopefully the strong BBC2 figures will have schedulers thinking.

We clearly have more than just an international men's game to sell. 

[dkw]

On the Attendance v Viewing figures, my opinion is for this world cup the viewing figures are much more important. For the sport going forward its 50/50.

[RigbyLuger]

15 hours ago, OriginalMrC said:

So this fantastically positive news is still being turned into a negative by some? The coverage of this world cup has been truly fantastic (remember Premier Sports anyone?) and will certainly helped gain lots of new fans. 

The viewing figures are so positive it has surely made TV execs sit up and notice. 700,000 for the Wheelchair game is astonishing really. Bet the BBC were very surprised, hence the change to their schedules! 

I remember Premier not showing a big game in the 2017 World Cup to show NZ playing soccer instead.

[The Masked Poster]

4 hours ago, JohnM said:

Capacity 53, 500.

Average attendance around 51, 000.

Not something I agree with, I'm just pointing out that these things are noticed. Even in silly examples like that. 

[Dave T]

52 minutes ago, dkw said:

On the Attendance v Viewing figures, my opinion is for this world cup the viewing figures are much more important. For the sport going forward its 50/50.

How so? 

In 2000 we had a record number of games on the BBC and the rest on Sky. Its likely we had millions of viewers that broke records. 

We lost £2m, almost bankrupted the RFL and didn't stage another WC for 8 years because crowds were poor. 

I'd agree with your point with respect to women and wheelchair tournaments - but for men I disagree. And tbh, it really shouldn't be either/or, it certainly isn't in other sports. 

[The Masked Poster]

16 minutes ago, Dave T said:

How so? 

In 2000 we had a record number of games on the BBC and the rest on Sky. Its likely we had millions of viewers that broke records. 

We lost £2m, almost bankrupted the RFL and didn't stage another WC for 8 years because crowds were poor. 

I'd agree with your point with respect to women and wheelchair tournaments - but for men I disagree. And tbh, it really shouldn't be either/or, it certainly isn't in other sports. 

Totally agree. The TV coverage is excellent and a fabulous thing to see. But it doesn't mean we arrogantly dismiss crowds as if they somehow don't matter. 

I've never seen this suggested about any sport anywhere else except here. 

But I'd forgotten that the 2008 WC was exclusively on sky. 

Edited November 9, 2022 by The Masked Poster

[Dave T]

 

[gingerjon]

33 minutes ago, Dave T said:

 

Love it.