BEFORE a ball had been kicked in 2024, Super League had agreed a new deal with Sky Sports to broadcast every single fixture.
Whilst the top flight were sorted for last season, the Championship was still locked in negotiations to find a broadcaster.
Unfortunately, though Premier Sports had expressed an interest after rebranding back from ViaPlay, nothing was forthcoming.
And now York RLFC chairman, Clint Goodchild, had explained why that was – with a quite unique analogy to a Chinese cabbage theory.
“We were offered one and it went to vote three times,” Goodchild explained on the League Express podcast.
“It’s like the Chinese cabbage term, if a container filled with cabbage comes in and you’re not quite sure if it’s good, go back to it in a week see if it’s still good or not – it was a little bit of that.
“By the time we actually got to a third vote and all the discussions had taken place, Premier Sports just got sick of us.”
Goodchild has explained why he was disappointed with the lack of the TV deal.
“I was very disappointed because I wanted commercial inventory and then we could drive new partners into our club and into the game.
“It’s about eyeballs, if you are Landrover on the front of our shirt and then Lloyd Motor Group rocks up wanting to be on TV in front of an extra 30,000 people every week, that would allow me to then go to Landrover and say ‘we are going to up the money this year and it’s ok if you don’t agree because we’ve got these guys ready to jump onboard’.
“That creates competition in the market. The reasons why it didn’t happen is we were worried about losing visiting fans coming to games.
“But I think that argument has been debunked over and over in every sport, not just rugby league.”
