I might be wrong, but has every game so far been on Sky Sports 1 as well? That makes a bit of a difference.

Also, there are RL adverts on a lot more than there used to be on Sky, I was watching something the otherday for an hour, and there was the triple header advert every ad break.

I think in general, it probably is.

The saints TV game figure was particularly impressive, no doubt swelled by the fact it was the official opening game of the new stadium (curious onlookers), coupled that it was the only game played on Friday. Still very good though.

If we look at the individual components of the game:

International

The 4 nations I think should be classed as a success. The crowds were pretty good, and there was decent terrestrial coverage on BBC, including a relatively successful return to Wembley. The exiles game could become an excellent additional fixture (or fixtures if expanded to a 2 or 3 game series) to the calendar. This year will be quiet of course, but with a World Cup looming, we have a massive opportunity to sell the International Game.

Super League

Attendances this year should be quite impressive. Saints should increase their average to around 13,000 hopefully, which is a 3000 jump from KR days, and almost double from last year at Widnes. Salford should be getting better crowds with their new stadium too. Wigan, Leeds and Wire should continue to get good crowds, whilst Hull and Bradford are still getting good crowds despite struggling on the pitch. Cas and Wakefields crowds last week were very promising too. Widnes should also get much better crowds than Crusaders did.

Competively speaking, there are 5 teams as I see that have a genuine chance of Silverware (Saints, Wire, Wigan, Leeds and Catalans), with a few others having an outside chance in the cup. This will hopefully fuel interest in the competition, and lead to more "big" games.

TV audience for Super league may be better too - the Monday night slot could get a larger audience than the Saturday slot, but it remains to be seen. Sky continue to give the game excellent coverage - 2 SL games a week, Origin and WCC, and 4 magazine shows (SL Fulltime, NRL Fulltime, SL Super Men, Boots'nAll). BBC's Super League show has had favourable comments regarding content, format and quality - it's just the broadcasting times that remains an issue, but nothing has really changed on that from previous years.

Challenge Cup

BBC's coverage of the cup reduces slightly, with only 1 game shown from the 4th and 5th rounds. The coverage on the BBC has certainly got better over recent years - Dave Woods is probably an improvement on Ray French, and the Red Button forum is pretty good. Claire Balding continues to impress with her enthusiasm and quality of her presentation (including some very good interviews with Richard Lewis). Not sure what the viewing figures were like last year. Attendance wise, the challenge cup seems to struggle still except for the final.

National Leagues / Northern Rail

This is probably the area of most concern. Whilst the competitions are pretty good in their own rights, not having automatic promotion certainly has had an impact. Numerous posters on here are known for their opinions on this, and I think it is a common one (may not be the majority opinion, but a significant number of fans feel dis-illusioned).

The TV coverage on Premier Sports will be interesting too - it's good that this level of the sport will have weekly TV coverage (plus the extensive NRL coverage on the same channel).

Amateur

This is a biggie - with the move to summer, there is a massive potential to attract more people to play the game. We also constantly hear good news about "expansion" areas, with new teams and competitions appearing.


So, overall, I would say the popularity is increasing. There are areas to work on, as always, but at the moment, rugby league is in a pretty good place. The amatuer move to summer, and world cup next year, are massive opportunities to attract a lot more people to the game.

The Tv figures are amazing, considering the first game had a 1hour build up. I'd imagine the match average would have been 350K+.

The thing that always annoys me is the play offs. There needs to be a reduced price ticket deal offered.

People praising the RFL need to think again. The sport is growing in participation, viewing figures and attendances seems to be the conclusion from the do gooders on here.

So why then could the RFL not negotiate a improved TV deal or a competition sponsorship deal worth any money at all?

In the same notion I question as to why you couldn't negotiate arm rests for your seat?

So less likely that any non SL clubs will feature in the clubs oldest competition , and yet the BBC actively look for giant killing ties in the FA cup

Explain to me how , having TV coverage during the week on a channel nobody has access to that earns the clubs nothing is a ' Good ' thing ?

They did. Its worth significantly more than the last deal.

The BBC doesn't have rights to the FA Cup (not even highlights) and hasn't for a few years now.

Is it better than clubs having no TV coverage at all, which was the alternative?

Good post hotpot. Especially re amateur. The amateur game has failed spectacularly over the last couple of decades in almost every respect. Hopefully a more positive and pro-active approach like the move to summer and the spread of the amateur game into new areas will bring lots of benefits including increased participation and exposure.
Also another good move in my opinion is the setting up of regional coaching associations where the SL club takes responsibility for the coaching in its area instead of relying on overworked RFL Development officers who are better deployed to "non-SL" areas. I'm more positive about the amateur game now than I ever have been.

Ok , sorry I meant whatever broadcaster has the current rights to show it , they actively look for potential giant killing games , its called the ' romance of the cup ' , now highly unlikely any clubs outside SL will be shown

WHY , is it better than no coverage at all , do you think the SL clubs would be happy to play midweek and be televised on essentially a ' pay per view ' channel and recieve nothing for it ?

How many potential "giant killings" have the BBC screened in recent years? Games between SL and non-SL sides more often than not end in blowout scores, hence the BBC predominantly choosing games between SL sides which they hope will at least be competitive. Nothing is likely to change in terms of how the BBC picks its games.

SL sides wouldn't accept such a deal from Premier Sports, but then again they have a product which is worth something to a broadcaster.

Championship and Championship One rugby league is the equivalent of Conference and Conference North/South football in terms of interest. Comparing its media rights to SL is ludicrous.

I'll ask again, is it better for clubs to have the opportunity to sell sponsorship, advertising etc on the basis that they might get watched by 50,000 people on Premier Sports every few weeks, or to not have any TV coverage at all?

I agree about the point of competition sponsorship - I have yet to be convinced that having players on the side of trucks is £2.5 million worth of sponsorship. Saying that, the majority of clubs agreed to it in favour of other (I presume) cash sponsorship deals - we'll have to wait and see, but I am sceptical.

The TV deal I thought was a good one. In these times of financial difficulties, to get a similar (was it a small increase) in the deal was pretty good, especially when there was little competition from other stations, and other sports have had their contracts decreased (The football leagues for example). Also, I think I'm right in saying that this deal excluded International Rights, which previous were covered in the same contract - meaning there will be additional money for International match rights on top of the SL contract.

In reality, there is only SKY who can offer rugbly league what it gets now. ESPN and Premier sports are the rival sports channels - ESPN I don't think would capacity for 2 games a week (I may be wrong), and premier Sports tend to buy other channels produced programmes (NRL, Nascar, NHL, Football) - which is why the NL coverage will be interesting this year, as I think they are producing the coverage themselves.

BBC don't tend to show domestic league coverage of any sport (maybe Celtic league union on BBC wales, and scottish football on BBC Scotland, I'm not sure) - it's mainly sporting events, or cup competitions. League competition coverage is generally in the form of highlights (MOTD, Football League show etc.), for which we have the Super League show.

ITV could probably accomodate 2 games a week across their channels (ITV4 in particular), but already have a good sports portfolio (CL football, FA Cup, Arrive RU Highlights, Touring Cars), and seem to want to broadcast as many "reality TV shows" as possible, as they generate the most money.

The last 3 that spring to mind are , leigh - Salford 2001 , Toulouse in 2004 , HKR-Warrington in 2005 , but if they dont cover any potential matches , they never will actually show one

So you admit , the coverage is worthless

I wasn't comparing it to anything

No it isn't if the clubs are losing income from spectators unable to attend midweek , and Championship sponsors tend not to be the type of companies that would benifit from national TV coverage

have you ever heard the term ' Flogging a dead horse ' ? , well TV coverage of the Championships is a dead horse , time to let it go and move on , it serves no purpose , it was bad enough being on SKY , it's only purpose there was to bring in the Co oP sponsorship , which was poor , on Premier Sports it will only be worse

From the off, I admit don't know the details of the contract with Premier Sports. I can't find anything on the internet stating what the details are (only a quick google search admittedly), only news reports stating that Premier Sports will be televising it. If you have any links, I would be genuinely interested to have a look. Also, I confess to being a St Helens fan, so I realise that fans of Championship clubs will approach this subject differently.

Personally, I enjoyed the coverage on Sky, and whilst the standard of rugby wasn't as good as Super League, some of the games were more enjoyable than the Super League games on the following days. To that extent, as a rugby league fan, having coverage of this level of competition was, and will continue to be, a good thing.

Had SKY not broadcast the games, and therefore Co-Op wouldn't have come in to sponsor the leagues, who would have? Were there other companies waiting in the wings to sponsor the championship? Would a deal with another company be any better financially? I suspect not. Was the Northern rail sponsorship based on television coverage too, especially the final? Genuine questions - not meaning to argue or dismiss your points.

Playing mid-week isn't ideal, but it isn't exclusive to Championship clubs - Super League clubs will have to play some games on Monday evenings this year, and the chances are that attendances will suffer. However, the TV audience will probably be very good, as there will be no competition from any other sport at that time. It's the same with Championship clubs - Sky couldn't broadcast on Fridays or Saturdays (SL coverage), so it's left with Sundays (when most of the league plays, so potentially much fewer viewers, and double header football), Mondays, or Thursdays - I suspect Thursdays were chosen as there was a gap in the schedules.

Out of curiousity - are there any figures that show what effect being on TV had on attendances?

People just wanted to see the green machine in action

The premier ' deal ' , is they will provide coverage of the Championship on thursday nights, thats it, so fans that can access it ( not Virgin Media though ) have the option to pay for it

So for fans of the clubs not involved, it is perhaps a good deal , for the clubs and fans involved, its a pain in the a**

The Co oP deal is a TV deal only, only the clubs staging the games get anything, but they have to give out the eqivalent of 800 free tickets per match.
so no TV coverage, no Co oP money , hardly the deal of the century, I'd have refused it and gone without

Northern Rail were already sponsoring the comp and televised final ( Final was on SKY, now reduced to Premier Sports ) , they just matched the Co oP for the 2 qualifying matches

The more you give for nothing, the less you will ever get, you reduce the value of you product to zero

It has been up to this point, and SL are playing what? 7/8 weeks, we have already had the moaning on here, it will get worse when the matches start , so yes we were ' filling in ' , for free, so once again ' giving it away ' for nothing

There are no concrete figures ( usually skewed by clubs including counting the free tickets to increase their averages even if they didn't turn up ) , but I'd suggest they were down overall

The latter.

Undoubtedly being screened on Premier Sports is a come down from Sky in terms of audience numbers but at least there is still some exposure to a wider audience than what turns up at a match, which will help with sponsorship to a limited degree. Whether the Coop will continue their sponsorship now that Premier Sports are showing the Championships I don't know. Northern Rail have just signed up for two more years but they don't seem too bothered about TV exposure. They appear to be sponsoring the comp for the community element rather than exposure of their brand, which of some companies do. Hopefully the Coop, given its alleged values, will continue to do likewise.

My family has subscribed to Premier Sports in order to continue watching the Championship games as there have been some belters. We also get a bunch of NRL games in with the package plus other less represented sports. So for £7.00 per month there is a good spread of sports generally and rugby league in particular. If Premier Sports honour what they have suggested in terms of their coverage then it should be quite good and they have good pundits too, including Nobby and Dave Woods (when available). I'm looking forward to hearing the video ref explain his decision!

Sky made a commercial decision three years ago to include the Championships in their screening package. They were not interested this time around, apparently claiming that the Championship did not add value. Therefore, they have made another commercial decision, this time to stop screening the Championships. Nobody else was interested in taking up the Championships other than Premier Sports, and they wouldn't pay (except £10 to a club of your choice if you paid a year's subscription up front). That would suggest that rather than the RFL giving something for nothing, nothing was what was being offered in the first place. Whether league fans like it or not - and I certainly don't like it - Championship rugby league is not worth much in commercial terms and subscription TV companies in particular will make decisions based solely upon commercial value. Therefore, if Championship rugby league was to get any exposure at all, it was Premier Sports for £10 a shot, or nothing.

So nothing it should have been, the ' exposure ' isn't worth the costs to the clubs

What costs?

Loss of revenue and general inconvienience of playing midweek, especially for Part Time players

If it's gaining in popularity how come we don't get crowds close to 102,569 anymore?

Midweek as well

, but not on SKY