My point about this time next year is that it would mean that we would have failed to get any sponsors for any of these tournaments if we were in the same position.
By Feb 1st, we absolutely should have domestic sponsors for the league comps - I wouldn;t be surprised to see a Cup sponsor slightly later.

Teams didn't have logos last year, I suspect it is one of those things which may not happen if the sponsor is announced late in the day - although I remember when a late deal was announced a few years back, they allowed fans to take them in and get them ironed on if they wanted.

SKY can prepare graphics very quickly.

There are rumours of betting companies being interested, although tbh, rumours don;t mean anything anyway. Let's see what happens.

I think a big problem here is that whilst RL sponsorship may be seen as functional and value for money, there is no real prestige associated with it. This means that whilst we may attract the mid-range sponsors, many of these are tightening up and not using sports sponsorship, and we hardly have the major players queuing up to sponsor us.

As long as RL fails to capitalise on the International game, we will be in the same boat.

There is the outside possibility that, should Sky pull out of RL and the sport be taken on by the BBC or ITV, the increased viewing may encourage more sponsorship of the competition.
Whether this could be more than the current Sky deal, who knows.
Alternatively, we could couple ourselves to the Aussie game and try and have a slice of their much larger cake.............for the good of the sport as a whoe.

The BBC televise RU which is a regional sport confined, with one exception, to the area South of Coventry.

Sky would have a massive hole in their sporting schedule.

The RFL would probably turn to the new sports rich BT channel (that won the right to show some Premier League games) and offer them the same deal which they would probably accept and see it as a steal.

As many have said, Sky arent going to pulling out anytime soon. After all they have a bargain under their belt.

Really?
2 hours a game, 2 games a week for 27 weeks, add another 30 hours or so for play-offs and stuff and they'd be scrambling around looking for no more than 150 hours of sports coverage....over 35 weeks...hardly a massive hole!

each match is also repeated 2-3 times, add in an hour a week for boots n all + repeats plus Super League Supermen and there is 70 games shown which averages at a bit more than 2 games a week plus play-offs.
There is probably about 250-300hrs of first show rugby league on Sky per year + repeats. That is a fairly decent amount of schedule to fill, especially considering RL live matches are regularly in the top 10 slots on sky sports each week. Slightly separate from the pragmatic time problem, considering that RL largely out-performs most other content bar football, and Sky already own all the footballing content they can, what would Sky replace it with that could give them similar numbers because 300 hrs of top 10 rated content is a fairly big hole to fill.

Oooooooh i am sorry. i didnt realise that Championship fans were not allowed to make comment on SL issues!

Why is it implausible? they dropped championship rugby league.

i couldnt care less about SL falling over!

there will have to be massive changes with the way it is being run currently or another 3-4 clubs will be putting out the begging bowls, and i would say most RL fans would agree.

it was merely a scenario that many of you seem to fear and havent really considered.

It's not that you're a fan of a championship club, it's that you deliberately framed the question with the quite transparent objective of giving the impression that this is in any way likely. The phrase "pulled out" is in its own right pejorative, trying to imply that Super League is somehow propped up by means of its TV deal whereas the reality is that like every other sport it has successfully sold its exceptionally valuable TV rights for a fair (some would say undervalued) sum.

Putting that to one side though, anyone who has even a vague understanding of Rugby League or sporting business would see that Super League, as one of Sky's best bang-for-buck rights holdings, is unlikely to ever suffer from Sky "pulling out" as long as its ratings persist and as long as in its own right it proves a decisive hook for a substantial number of subscribers. Dropping the Championship, whilst it rated well, was not going to cause significant numbers of people to ditch Sky altogether - most RLcentric viewers would perceive it as an additional extra to the main event.

2 x 27 + 9 = 63......I was 7 games out


Repeated games are fillers.......it is the audience of between 90,000 and 190,000 that the LIVE games attract that SKY are interested in, Boots'n'all gets low 30k's.

I'm not saying SKY wouldn't miss RL.....I am saying that it would not leave a MASSIVE scheduling hole to fill. SKY pay their 18 million a year and they get brilliant VFM when compared to what they pay for wendyball, but the OP asked what would happen to the game, not what SKY would replace it with.

which is why I said it was a little bit more. Those extra 7 matches are an extra match at easter + MM which usually doesnt screen the first game. It is also a minimum of 70 games, there could, theoretically be more. I think a couple of times Sky has screened the Les Catalans game filmed by Canal+ though im not sure what the relationship is like with BeIn for next year.
I agree. But even as 'filler' it has value and even Boots 'n' all (which is awful and produced very much on the cheap side) have a value and it is relative. For example, whilst a repeat of an SL game may get only 20k if what would replace it only gets 5k, then even a repeat of an SL game has good value.

I have to disagree, i think 250-300 hrs of first show programming, 150-200hrs of live events per year is a pretty big hole to fill. I also dont think you can make that judgement without looking at what they are replacing it with. Of course 150-200hrs of live programming in a year isnt that much, there are over 35k hours of Sky Sports programming over 4 channels each year, but trying to replace 70 of your best 500 slots a year is pretty large task especially considering you already own pretty much everything else and RL is outperforming it.
As for what would happen to the game, well, £18m would flow out of the game straight away, temporarily most SL clubs could survive as they are now. Probably for 5 years or so. During that time the game would need to go FTA as BT is the only other option but they have very very little visibility so would need to pay out a fortune to make it viable. During that 5 years or so they would either need to prove their worth to an FTA channel so that they would pay a similar amount or gain enough sponsorship to to cover any shortfall. It wouldnt be the instant death some suspect.

An primarily FTA world cup might give us a taster of the viability of a sky-less world.

Sky would lose millions in subscriptions and advertising
RL would be on fta and attract decent sponsorship
Fans wouldn't have to put up with the rankings of Stevo
The national side would get more exposure and draw bigger crowds

Sounds good to me!

The OP asked 2 questions, the 2nd question;

And what would happen if they decided not to bother with Rugby League any more? and decided against renewing the deal.

This is open to interpretation, what would happen is not confined to RL. I just thought I would give the reverse side of the arguement as it's all very speculative anyway.

I was going to make the point about repeats, SLSM, CC games etc but it's already been done for me.

A massive hole I suppose would depend on your definition of massive. If someone put a hole in my body the size of RL in the SKY sport schedule, then I would equate it to being about the size of a fist or a foot. Not anywhere near 50% of my body, but a big enough hole for me to call it a massive hole. Which would cause some pain and require money to be spent to fix it.

Stretching the metaphor???

Anyway SKY are not going to pull out of RL, what RL lacks is a competitor with SKY sports & a competition that the public can latch onto which is free to air.

For me RU success is the twin prongs of money from SKY and the 6 nations. The 6 nations is an annual event, if you don't watch RU it's easy to latch onto anyway as it just requires a beer, a patriotic duty to sing the national anthem badly and some concept of cheering when a point is added to the total.

RL lacks these ease of access to newcomers, if you live in Norwich, you click on the TV and the challenge cup is on, where is the tie in, you are not local to any of the teams, there is one of the teams is out, so you won't see them for 12 months and the other team may not be on for another 4 - 10 weeks, if at all.

You can just enjoy sport, but for people to become regular watchers or supporters, they need some link into the sport, other than a one off match every 12 months.

Just to pick up on your last point.
Plenty of people enjoy watching sport on tv, that they have no intention of watching live in person.
For a start, American Football & Baseball, Aussie Rules etc
The armchair viewer just wants to be entertained and sometimes just a picture and some noise seems to be enough (most forms of reality TV would back up this arguement)
People like Claire Balding can do this for our sport.
Even though she may not be the most knowledgable, her enthusiasm more than makes up for it and i'm sure that, for people who are casual viewers, she is far more preferable that Ray French or Jonathaon Davies.

You can watch just for enjoyment, even I have been able to watch the odd game of RU when really struggling for sport. However I would argue that most people watching sport would like some involvement in it, that may not mean having a local team, but at least a leaning to one team or another.

I would argue that more people would make the effort to watch a 2nd match or 3rd, if there was more consistency in the teams playing and a shorter period between matches.
I would rather a mini break in SL and back to back weekends of CC on free to air, as a trial to see if we can pull in an audience and build on it, other than just RL regulars.
I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I just think RL lacks that easy access that RU offers, we can't carbon copy the 6 nations as it would be a joke and we can't have an intense period of RL, like Wimbledon does with tennis, a 7's tournement would be my prefered option, but would be opposed by clubs who will not send first class players. So the CC is all we have.

Cricket has created a shorter game in 20/20 to pull in the less intense punter,
darts was easier to revelotionise as they have less players in their whole league than one RL club has in it's squad, so a small amount of money makes millionares out of top darts players.

Let's face it, MjM, SKY will pull the plug and you know it ..... and you're BRICKING it, I can tell by the manner of your post

it honestly wasn't aimed at winding anyone up Tony!

have i hit a nerve or something?

My God, rlfans' greatest poster is still alive! I thought the demon drink had claimed you years ago



But your powers are weak old man. In this hypothetical bizarro world where Sky pulled out and no one filled the breach then at least 10 of the other SL clubs would go bust and Leeds will be champions in perpetuity. Not much different to now I know but after giving it some consideration actually it doesn't sound so bad.