Apart from the prem the football leagues deal has gone down, by quite a lot. As have a few other sports.

A lot of people were expecting super league to struggle to keep the deal at the current level let alone improve on it (albeit only slightly)

Yeah I used to watch cricket religiously during the summer and couldn't wait for the one dayers and certain tests, after I got pay TV about 10 years ago, I slowly got bored with it to the point I only watch a little if I've got nothing to do or there's nothing else on TV.

Btw, I noticed the SL/RFL deal hasn't mentioned Internet rights, they could be worth a pretty penny and the way the world is moving with streaming and such, I hope the RFL don't give them away for sfa like the NRL did last time.

Well that's great news then, shows the RFL are heading in the right direction if they are one of the few to get an increase (and a bloody good increase by the looks of it).

Well done all involved.

But do we get higher TV ratings than RU? Sky, BBC and ESPN all show RU and more than 1 game a day...

Based on what the deal is estimated now... If it's split between just the 14 SL clubs it's 'only' about 100k extra each per year... And you want to add two SL clubs on that



Considering only what 4/5 clubs will be spending full cap right now intruky can't see it making much of a difference in wage / salary cap terms. Though will ease financial burden on more.

All this means really us the sponsorship deal needs to be the big increase!

we're never going to get every game screened live on sky like with the NRL & foxtel......but could we stream every game live via SLTV or something?

You'd think so, TV stations are on the way out, everything will be via streams soon, pick and choose what you like.

Btw, I think the latest AFL deal had 50/100 million or something in there for the IT rights

We don't havecan official stream right now do we? So unless SKY have put the blockers on it (probably) could be a bit of money their. Though let's not compare to AFL that gets MEGA money deals.

I don't understand the talk of expanding the SL on the back of this. The majority of clubs aren't spending up to the cap and we aren't playing our players enough. To keep the level of SL as high as possible this money needs to filter through so clubs can offer players enough to keep our talent.

The figure only looks a lot higher as the last deal (about £65mill?) was split over 3 years this is over 5 years which you could argue in inflation terms could make it equal / worse as over a longer period!

I'm sure the IT rights are separate to the TV deals not unless Uncle Rupert has a clause in the contract.

If he doesn't, that means any company could bye the rights and stream live games, replays, RL shows, news and all the rest and charge whatever they think it's worth.

The NBA in the USA has a live streaming site for Basketball, you pay a certain amount a month or year and you can watch it at any time without it eating into you ISP bandwidth.

Telstra has it out here for AFL, RL and V8 Super Cars.

Yeah but didn't sky get in early last time to stop ESPN getting it?

Don't know tbh. But of you look over inflation since signed last deal and projected growth by time this one will be up it's not really that good a deal at all. ( though better than nothing).

Also if for example if Union get a new bumper deal next year we have to wait until 2017 to match it!

Yes that's what I mean, depends on what clauses / control SKY have.

Bare in mind they also have SKY player which (under a multi room package) you can stream the live SL games on too they may well have something in place.

But if it's only for the ESL, it's not bad, you could still end up with another 10/15/20 million from Challenge Cup, Championship, WCC and Internationals.

And hopefully Internet rights.

Looking at this deal at around 140 million Aus, that's about what the ARL got back in the early 90's just before Rupert and Kerry took an axe to the game, at the time, RL was killing AFL in TV money and expansion, now look at it.

Yea true but then again we are also presuming that every penny of the SL deal goes directly to the clubs which I'm sure is not the case exactly.

I hope the championships see a hood direct increase as we get next to nothing now and considering that 90% of players are all British and a lot of young talent. Great strides could be made in our games development should funding see and increase.

For sure, lower Leagues and grass roots are the lifeblood of all sports.

Club game against club game RL gets the much higher figures. The only reason Sky pays a huge amount for Club RU is for those nice England games in October.

It would be good if games were streamed online two teams in USARL now do this so why can't we. Even if it means just the Sunday games and are pay per view.

Given the state of the economy, it's probably as good as we'll get, even if inflation'll eat away a fair bit of it (there's more chance of Jonny Vegas standing up in public and saying that Wigan are the greatest RL side this planet's ever seen than the Bank of England getting an inflation forecast right!).

For online rights to be worth something, the quality (and money spent) on recording non-Sky games would need to be massively improved. MLB/NBA and whatever already have broadcast quality feeds coming from every game. We had some bloke with a camcorder and comedy biased club commentators.

It's a superb deal for us. The football league deal went down 26%!!! After doing some basic divisions, this deal is worth about £2million a year more. You take inflation, but it was only 3 years ago so the deal has probably improved, which is a fantastic deal for the sport considering some of the deals of other sports.

Good deal and well done to those involved.



Now can they quash once and for all any idea that the extra money will be to fund another team in SL. The money will help cover inflation for the clubs already involved and another mouth at the table will make the deal won, meaningless. Besides money matters there are simply not enough quality players around to equip the fourteen teams we have now never mind another team. We may be forced to consider a move back down to twelve as the financial pressure mounts on a few more clubs. The future of the game has to secured with this money not just frittered away propping up failing businesses with little to no future, harsh I know but the wordl is changing very quickly.

ours is something like a 8-10% increase......we can't grumble with that