LEIGH LEOPARDS owner Derek Beaumont has called for rugby league to walk away from Sky when the current deal ends in 2027.
Sky has been rugby league’s backbone ever since the summer game was created back in 1996, with the latest deal seeing every Super League fixture being broadcast live on the broadcasting giant.
However, there has also been increasing criticism aimed at the broadcaster, with the current Sky deal sitting at merely £21 million – a massive reduction from the £40 million that was negotiated back in 2021.
With the likes of darts now being paid more than rugby league to be broadcast on Sky, Beaumont believes the sport needs to split ties.
“If you switch rugby league off of Sky – and it takes some balls – I would do it tomorrow,” Beaumont told League Express.
“I’m not happy with people coming here filming all my games for £21 million a year. All the other things they use my brand for as well, it’s worth miles more than that and the whole sport it.
“You get 300,000 watching Sky for a game – and we’re all having to pay for it – and then you get three million on the BBC.
“If only the 300,000 decide to buy the Our League app because they can’t watch it any other way, for £10 a month you would get £36 million – we get £21 million off Sky so what are we doing?
“We need them to know that’s no more in two years when it runs out. We need to set it up ourselves, drive everything towards it and market it.”
Beaumont went further, taking aim at the idea of ‘player welfare’ with his side having ten days rest after round one and then a mere five-day turnaround after round two, purely because of broadcasting reasons.
“I would do it in house and I get exposure by giving a game to the BBC every week or fortnight and advertise where you get the rest from within that.
“We are getting paid far less than darts! Every game is on Sky at a different time but we have to play games on Thursday and then Sunday.
“Look at our opening game, we play Wigan on a Thursday night and I dig that because there is a story there with the Battle of the Borough and so on.
“But then from that Thursday on, we don’t play until Sunday and then we play on the Friday. They go on about welfare but we get ten days rest and then five days rest.
“That’s because the BBC want us on as their first game against Huddersfield on a Sunday. Everyone is all over and nobody is really happy with it.
“When someone is paying £40 million for that right, that’s not a problem but when they are only paying £20 million and only saying we are worth £17 million then they have drove the sport for too long.”
So what is Beaumont’s solution?
“I would be saying now, ‘this is the direction of travel the owners are going on’. We’ve got a billionaire in Mike Danson at Wigan, we’ve got someone with money like Martin Jepson at Castleford, I’ve got friends in America who are looking to invest and there are wealthy people at Saints and Warrington.
“They are all saying ‘what’s going on here?’ The game has enough people that can show their teeth and say ‘we are prepared to take it on our own chin instead Sky’.
“The conversation now with Sky is ‘this is where it’s going to travel too in two years’ time and that will be the end unless you get to where we were at £40 million to take this forward’.
“We go black in between games. Sky have adverts in between games and we have a sign saying ‘be back later’ with a black screen. Put ads on it for free before having it blank.
“Get the disciplinary hearings on there, there is so much content you could drive to that which people would go mad for.
“Once you’ve got 300,000 people paying £10 a month, then up it to £15 and suddenly you’ve gone from £36 million a year to £48 million and no one is arsed because it’s £5.
“That’s how you drive this sport and get it to a better place but at the moment we don’t have the people or resources driving it in the right direction.”
