I think that would be the essence of it.

More likely to be

Lewis: Hello ESPN who would you like to by the rights to SL
ESPN: Hello Mr Lewis, thanks for your call, but we spoke to that very expensive, highly talented young man from IMG that you pay to sell those rights, if its all the same, it would make more sense for us to speak to him
Lewis: Yeah I know but for some reason our fans are mostly made up of idiots who will take any excuse to talk the game down and complain, if i dont get involved there will be a lot of disappointed critics.

Bloody miserable bugger , you always have to spoil things dont you ?

i wonder if some of the people on here bagging lewis mercilessly secretly dont want a good TV deal because it will show them up massively as the biased people they are

Channel 4 paid a lot of money to get the test cricket rights from the bbc about 10 years ago and did a great job modernising the coverage and put money into marketing the game and into the grass roots of the sport.

No idea wether they'd be interested in doing the same for the challenge cup/part of a super league package but i think something like this would be great for the game.