Is there any reason why the Rugby League cant get a dedicated channel on Sky to promote the game.
Could include interviews, phone in's, archived matches, IE challenge cup, super league, regal trophy, the old floodlite trophy, internationals etc etc the list is endless.
Im sure if the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd can have there own channel surley we as a sport could generate enough intrest to make this viable

How much does it cost to have a dedicated channel on Sky? Would it be free to Sky customers or would they have to pay extra? How many people would actually watch it?

I cant see why it couldnt be free to air.
I flick around channels all the time when theres nothing on, i couldnt think of anything better than watching a old match or two or listening in to phone in

I agree, I'd watch it and so would a lot of die-hard RL fans. But how many others would? If its free to Sky customers then it's got to be financed through advertising which comes back to the issue of who would watch it?
I'd agree that it would be good to have an RL channel showing old games and interviews/news etc, maybe only have it on from 6pm onwards each day like BBC 3 & 4, but I just don't know how it would be funded.

It's something I've always wondered about, and something I'd love to try and look into as a journalist, and see if there were possibilities, avenues or even chances to see if something could happen.

when you look around the amount of poor quality local channels on sky. and some of the religeous based ones seemingly ran out of someoens front room it cant cost as much as you think to actually air the channel. obviously then you have production and staffing costs but it could be viable . There used to be a channel purely for wrestling! which had to expand to wrestling and MMA to fill up the schedule i guess.

I've also thought the same, but channels like Babe station must rake in the money from the sad acts calling in, and the mystical man in the sky channels have the Nazi youth bloke with his billions of Euros backing them.

How would an RL channel finance the channel? Rugby babes talking about god?

as niche markets go....you may be on to something there

I don't know how these channels are run but wouldn't it be possible to be sponsored by say League Express, Rugby League World, Forty Twenty, Love Rugby League, RLFans, clubs promoting their up and coming matches and any other RL organisation with adverts between the programmes? I'd also pay a small subscription every month for a dedicated RL channel. And from midnight till 5am it could be more for the adults where pervs ring in to chat to babes starting off in team kits and end up with nothing on


Surely all these would generate enough money to keep the channel going.

Why not tennis, golf and cricket. One of the few ways we are spreading the game is people accidentally watching or flicking through the channels and finding our game interesting. A shift away from the traditional SS channels (come on everyone knows them off by heart) would only hurt our game.

TV is dying, you could start a rugby league channel on the Internet as a web TV show. Very little cost involved, choose your own schedule, no silly contracts need to be signed.

Superleague could easily do this if they wanted, they would have the rights to old (Superleague anyway) matches that could be put online.

Or even a weekly roundup show with some interviews etc

TV isn't dying. Everybody I know watches TV or owns a TV.
Less than half the people I know watch things regularly on the Internet.

Well your looking at £75,000 just to get on the sky epg. If it was FTA then your looking at an extra cost of being on the Freesat EPG. Cable add more.

Then you have the satellite uplink costs, studio costs, staff cost.

So at this point your well into a million quid.

Annually or one off?

Its annually.

Forgot to also add that that you need a broadcasting licence and of course there is a fee for that.

If you had to estimate within 500k, how much?

Are there any chances to recoup money once it's all set up other than subscription?

This.

The main reason a shift to our own channel would be bad is because people would be unable to watch RL by accident or be unable to casually watch RL. They'd have to be full on RL fans to want to order the channel.

The only way around this would be to have the usual games on Sky and BBC and have the extra games on RLTV (or whatever you'd call it).
You'd have a potential line up of:
Sky Sports - 2x live SL games per week (Fri 8pm & Sat 6pm), live SoO, live NRL final, half of England internationals.
BBC - 2x CC games per round (from round 4), half of England internationals.
RLTV - 5x live SL games per week (Sat 1pm & 4pm, Sun 12pm, 3pm, 6pm).
1x live Championship game (Thurs 8pm), 8x live NRL games, other live internationals, Student RL, CC rounds pre/4th round (+maybe 2x games up to semis).

A lot of that I'd what Premier Sports do already, and if they can find the money for production costs for one Championship game, then surely that equipment can be used to cover other games?
The rest of your weekly schedule would be repeated highlights of weekly rounds for each comp, a magazine show, a gameshow, interviews, classic games (Finals, internationals, SL). If we're that desperate to fill it all, there's always RL shop in the morning and RL babes in the really early morning!

The main issue would be whether it would make or lose money. The channel would take money off of current TV contracts with Sky and BBC (for not being exclusive rights), and whilst the channel would be subscription based (similar to Premier Sports), would it make up the shortfall (and exceed it)? And would we get anything more than peanuts for adverts?

As much as I would love a dedicated RL channel, I doubt we'd make any money off of it.

The only thing keeping League solvent(just about) is the £14 million a year SKY pay, that would dissapear if the RFL went on thier own, would the new channel earn that in advertising? Plus if League left SKY they would probably be hostile & activley push Union more than they do now. Our only hope is to grow slow & expand to a point where there is real competition for our broadcasting rights.

Your looking £2m for basic. Another thing is do the RFL hold the visual rights or would these have to be purchased from BBC, Sky, ITV

To recoup money you would need advertising and selling down time to tellyshopping.

Why should Sky make any effort with RL programming when they have us over a barrel as it is?

I'd assume, like Sky Sports, Premier don't actually own the equipment but get someone in to do it for them.

I find it hard to believe some of those minor very low viewership channels that exist are costing 2mill ayear to operate!

Keep the SL live games on Sky and have a RL channel showing historical games, Championship, an amateur round up programme, call ins etc etc. Sponsorship and other ways of revenue generating could make it cost neutral. Should be able to pull 100K+ viewers peak I would have thought?

100k peak your joking. your looking at around 10,000 to 30,000 for something like this.

The reason why the other very low rating viewer channel exist is that they either operate on other sat systems across Europe or like GOD tv and most of the Asian channel they rely on donations.

Even if you had the money, don't underestimate the challenge of getting enough content to keep the channel interesting. Endless reruns of old matches ( even assuming fees for the same are low ) won't be enough. Even if the channel was only on air 7pm to midnight every night, that's still a heck of a load of time to fill.