Chris Irvine now made redundant as RL correspondent at The Times. Rugby League has a serious PR problem and the RFL are oblivious to it. Perhaps now that Ralph Rimmer will be paid a handsome £250K by the RFU, whoops, sorry RFL, we may see a u-turn?

Shame on The Times.

Like so many others in London this paper ignores anything from the north and that includes Scotland.

The boys at Twickenham must be sing now (little weasles).

Thanks for your efforts Chris.

Can Hector McNeil or the RFL make a strong protest do The Times.

Ideally i'd boycott the Times and the rest of the southern based media but as I no longer buy any of these Tory propaganda sheets, that wouldnt change anything. So instead Ill just continue with my barrage of twitter posts to the varous sports desks. Again that wont change anything but it will make me feel better.

The RFL have got every game for he 2021 World Cup to be shown by the BBC.

For 2013 there were only England and a couple of other games on BBC and 2017 we only had England games on BBC.

Give The Sunday Times' 'Putting the Boot in' article a read from just after the Bradford City fire. I can't believe it was written in my lifetime. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXoqsnsXkAUST_2.jpg

Give The Sunday Times' 'Putting the Boot in' article a read from just after the Bradford City fire. I can't believe it was written in my lifetime. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXoqsnsXkAUST_2.jpg

Does anybody actually buy newspapers anymore

Not since the improvements in toilet paper and chip wrappings have made them redundant.

Unfortunately, even if the Beeb did show weekly RL games from all leagues, the nation is so round ball focussed and Union focussed, it would take a lot to get people interested. Most true sports fans subscribe to BT or Sky anyway so if we can't get viewers already.

The only way to truly know though is to abandon Sky, take a massive financial hit, tons of adverising (another financial hit) and show weekly or twice weekly games on the Beeb or another free terrestial channel. This is similar to how the NFL got so many viewers when it came ocer in the late 80s on C4. However, this is a risk SL is not willing to take, and I can't blame them really.

Sky own the rights to show Championship games as well as SL. I guess there's probably more to it, but wouldn't it be in everyone's interests if live Championship games could be on the BBC instead at minimal cost to the broadcaster just to cover expenses and reduced attendances for the home team?

That way there'd be more exposure for the game, which wouldn't be harmful to Sky if a few folk then decide to subscribe because they enjoy watching the Championship games and want to watch some SL as well.

The BBC made most of their Outside Broadcast staff redundant about a decade ago and contract out all major Outside Broadcast events like Wimbledon, FA cup, Challenge Cup and the 6 Nations.

The set-up at an OB usually involves a command truck worth about £4,000,000 and costing £10,000 a day to hire, a team of self employed contracted 6 riggers/runners, 6 cameras (minimum) and another Transport vehicle as well as Camera operators, producers, directors, presenters, commentators normally BBC employees. If the game involves the crew driving from London, then 1 game takes a minimum of 2 days and an overnight stay.
Knowing how much a driver/rigger get's paid, I would estimate the cost of putting on a Live game as between £65,000 and £75,000........so 2 games a week will run the BBC £3,500,000 or so over the season and that's for a pretty basic set up......
...the question needs to be asked if the RFL were to offer to bankroll this themselves for 3 seasons, would the increased exposure help the game and would the increased exposure attract a big name sponsor to cover the costs through naming rights?

IF....and it's a BIG IF.......we were to get 1,000,000 a game, then that would be essentially 69,000,000 sets of eyeballs over 3 years for £10,000,000.......I am a risk averse person by nature, but I reckon the games got more to lose by not trying something like this.....if sky come back with less money and more conditions in a few years time, I'd let them keep SL, but not the rights to the championship......

100% agreed. Though my preference would be for a halfway house - 3 televised games per week, 2 on Sky (or.another subsricption service) 1 on FTA. Sky get 1st pick each week, FTA get 2nd pick, Sky get 3rd pick. Would see a short term reduction in revenue from broadcast deal, but would hopefully have a long term benefit. Super league key well still have to subsidise the footage on FTA, or come up with a clever deal with a production company, maybe for a free 4th pick per week?

The nation isn't Union focussed by any stretch of the imagination. The Times readership and/or editorial staff might be though.

That would be utter madness and most clubs would go broke. Why not instead ask the BBC or any other terrestrial channel to pay the going rate for TV rights.

How about we try and sell super league highlights show to a network that's gonna put it on in a timeslot which will attract viewers instead of the joke times the BBC give the competition

You saying so won't make it any less true......But rather than me falling into the age old trap of rolling out statistics, why don't you respond with proof of how Union isn't a popular sport in England.

League needs to raise its public profile and FTA TV is the best way to do that.

It's inevitable that Rugby League will dwindle IMO. It'll be back to the pre-Super League days over the next ten years. The decline we're seeing now will continue and we'll see a reduced TV deal from now on.

The main problem the sport has is that it's bankrolled by Sky. Sky don't give a damn about anything other than football, hence the incredibly poor presentation they do of Super League. But Sky itself is probably in serious trouble, it's whole business model is being scrutinised and the vultures are circling. The likes of Amazon, Netflix, Facebook and Youtube are going to make a move into broadcasting sports very soon. Once they do, if they price it right, Sky haven't got a chance, they'll lose Premier League football and subscription numbers will plummet. With such a small fan base, Super League would be lucky to get a deal at all.

small, shrinking and aging fan base is how I'd describe it....

If people think the future of RL is dependent upon traditional print media and terrestrial TV broadcasting then they are just as backwards thinking as they often accuse the RFL of being.

...yet happening in reverse in Toronto.

Print media no...... But FTA TV delivers millions of viewers.....

One small issue over there and that is where do you think their players are coming from, it certainly isn't Toronto.
Maybe we should just export the whole of the UK player pool to N America and we can have "All New Super Dooper League".
You do have to admire their marketing prowess and their ability to get RL off the ground (in a non RL nation), they have done this extremely well.
However, without some kind of significant junior structure (not just taking failed college NFL players), they will struggle like hell in the medium/long term.

On the assumption that FTA means broadcast on a premium channel at peak time, not squirrelled away at a niche timeslot, or consigned to the 'red button' or streamed in a website.

Does the BBC's Super League Show already get 'millions of viewers' then?

The nation isn't 'Union focused', but Union does a much better job at capturing the attention of wider audiences through events such as the Six Nations and the European Cup.

RL doesn't have that, and I think a large part of that is down to the sport's image. The Challenge Cup Final is colloquially known as "Rugby League's Big Day Out" - really? In 2018? Is a day trip to London really that much of a treat these days? We have resistance from the supporter base over Magic Weekend, largely fuelled by some sections of the support being incredulous that they might have to buy a train ticket or - worse still - a budget hotel room at event prices. And our "big event" semi finals are being held in the cultural and tourist Mecca that is Horwich, near Bolton.

The decision from The Times isn't one that should cause surprise. The Times understands its audiences, it understands the advertisers that it wants to attract, and it simply needs to produce content to connect the two. Look at the paragraph above and tell me that you're suprised that it doesn't see RL as a worthwhile investment to achieve that.

The decision from The Times isn't the death-knell for the sport on it's own, but there is a danger of "death by a thousand cuts" here. The Times isn't the first media entity to decide that RL has no commercial value to it, and it won't be the last. Super League Europe and the clubs (who, lets be honest, get an easy ride when it comes to issues about the marketing of the sport) need to do much more, and quickly, to reverse this trend.

And I share the concerns expressed by Saddened about the future TV deal. There's a lot of bluster from certain sections about how good a deal Sky are getting from RL, and how certain individuals can get a much better TV contract in 2021, but I just don't see it. I don't see that we're offering Sky any additional value to justify them paying more for RL content - in fact, I see the opposite.

Sky do give a damn about other things than football.

Formula 1 is one of the main reasons we went from having the hour Backchat show on a Tuesday, the hour long Boots’N’All on a Wednesday, an hour long Superstars show before a Championship game on a Thursday, a SL game on a Friday, an NRL game on a Saturday morning, a SL game on a Saturday evening and an hour long highlights show on a Sunday night.

Then they got the Sky F1 channel and we lost Backchat, Boots’N’All, Superstars, the Championship, we lost NRL a while before (but now have it back and more!) and the Saturday evening slot (which was always my favourite time for a game!) moved to a Thursday.

I sent emails to Sky complaining about what happened to the coverage of RL on Sky.

We have it a bit better now though (not because of my emails, im sure) as we now have THREE NRL games a week, we’ve never had that before. We have Catalans on a Saturday evening (have done for four years now but we never had that third SL game before), as well as the Thursday and Friday slots for games.

That’s five or six games of RL on Sky every week. We’ve actually never had that before.

If SL can keep pushing the Salary Cap up and keep attracting better players to stay in SL or to come to SL, there’s no reason why we won’t get a better deal from Sky (or someone else). It’s in the club’s and the RFL’s hands to do so. Make it seem like we’re too good not to have.

The RFL have persuaded the BBC to put all games for the 2021 World Cup live on the BBC (we’ve never had that before! we have been consigned to Premier Sports for the last two WCs outside England games and the finals). So it’s up to them to start making a fist of getting interest in SL out there too. And, for me, that is by getting better teams for those who can afford it. Nobody cares if they watch City beat Watford 6-0 in the PL. So why does it matter that they see Wire beat Salford 54-6 in SL, if we get almost NRL standard games between Wire and Hull, Saints and Leeds, Toronto and Wigan... THAT’s what is going to sell the game to the TV companies, not getting good mid table sides because the Salary Cap has evened out the sport from the middle out.

Also if we have these star studded teams, more fans are going to turn up to watch. I’ve noticed in the last five years that Union has left us behind with attendances. Their grounds are full (other than Sale). In SL you’re hard pushed to ever see a ground outside Headingley and the Jungle anywhere near full. Wigan’s attendances have hit a mud slide in the last five years. Wire and Saints never fill the seated areas in their grounds. Get better teams across the board and I’d bet you’d see better attendances to go with it and the interest to broadcast games that have full houses will be greater.

And still no aspiration from the RFL to have a vibrant (even if propped up) SL team in the major conurbation of the UK, oh and capital, oh and financial capital and oh where the 'money is'

Union clubs have left London because the interest for club Union rugby isn’t really there neither.

Sarecens moved from London to Watford (although now are back in London)
Irish moved from London to Reading
Wasps moved from London to Wycomb to Coventry