It shows the importance of getting a decent amount of FTA coverage for any sport if you want it to become part of the public conciseness. Wales v SA in a "friendly" should be blown off the ratings by England playing anyone at any sport....but because RL is confined to Pay TV and is considered a northern hobby, it struggles to grasp the attention of the public and the media.
Pipe dreams of TV deals with ITV are all well and good, but in reality, I suspect the best way forward is negotiation with SKY AND A FTA PARTNER with a view to having 1 game a week on FTA. SKY get an average of about 130,000 for a SL game across the season and a quick glance shows that the BBC/ITV digital channels get about 500k for their programmes....for SL to be of interest to these channels then they would need to get 500k figures week in week out to be worth any "investment" on their part.

I suspect the TV money from SKY won't increase too much next time, so maybe the 1 FTA game a week needs to be a bargaining chip.....

Anyone who's up is in for a treat, someone changed EVERY mention of Rugby World Cup on the 2015RWC page to Rugby UNION World Cup. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup#Bids

Anyone who's up is in for a treat, someone changed EVERY mention of Rugby World Cup on the 2015RWC page to Rugby UNION World Cup. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup#Bids

Quote ="Conorgiantsfan"Anyone who's up is in for a treat, someone changed EVERY mention of Rugby World Cup on the 2015RWC page to Rugby UNION World Cup. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup#Bids'" eh? no mention of a Rugby Union World Cup there?

Quote ="Conorgiantsfan"Anyone who's up is in for a treat, someone changed EVERY mention of Rugby World Cup on the 2015RWC page to Rugby UNION World Cup. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup#Bids'" eh? no mention of a Rugby Union World Cup there?

Quote ="gutterfax" Quote ="Conorgiantsfan"Anyone who's up is in for a treat, someone changed EVERY mention of Rugby World Cup on the 2015RWC page to Rugby UNION World Cup. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup#Bids'" eh? no mention of a Rugby Union World Cup there?'" Someone must have restored it, I knew it would only be there for a short time!

Quote ="gutterfax" Quote ="Conorgiantsfan"Anyone who's up is in for a treat, someone changed EVERY mention of Rugby World Cup on the 2015RWC page to Rugby UNION World Cup. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup#Bids'" eh? no mention of a Rugby Union World Cup there?'" Someone must have restored it, I knew it would only be there for a short time!

Article on the strong viewing figures for England games:

[urlhttp://www.rlwc2013.com/rugby-league-world-news/article/1344/over-two-million-viewers-watch[/url

Justifies the decision to not let SKY have exclusive rights and go for a BBC/Premier Sports combination IMO. The challenge of course is to get more games on the BBC next time.

To be honest as we where up against the Tennis at the same time we did not do too bad. The casual sports watcher had a lot to choose from.

The official viewing figures from Saturday’s live coverage of #RLWC2013 on the BBC show a peak audience of 2.2m watched England’s final group game against Fiji. The match, which England won 34-12, had a 15% share of the total viewing audience across all channels. These latest figures compare very strongly with other sport available to audiences on Saturday and shows how RLWC2013 is capturing the interest of the British sporting public. For example, the ATP Tennis World Tour Finals on BBC Two at the same time had a 1.2million peak audience, the rugby union England v Argentina international had a peak of 571,000, while the live Premier League football on SKY had a peak of 810,000.

excellent.I think the BBC have missed a trick not taking more group games, especially over the weekend slot where a Sunday game could have easily been feasible.

Agree with this but I guess it's something to be seen in hindsight. Even hard core RL fans have been positively surprised by the quality and competitiveness of the group games so I guess the BBC have also. Bodes well for tv coverage of future international league though if we can take advantage

Where do you get the viewing figures. I have heard the RL was 4 times as big.
BARB aren't showing this week yet

RLWC Site quote 2.2 million peak for England v Fiji with RU England v Argentina peaking at 571k
Live premiership football peaked at 810k (but I can't remember what the game was.

And also, as we are talking media, I was in Birmingham on Saturday and was amazed to see the RLWC logo on billboards....in key places too.
They were for a partnership sponsor cider but the RLWC logo stood out and was very noticeable.
Very surprised to see it but great work by whoever got them there.

Damian Johnson tweeted it

man u vs nal?

God bless Knock-Down Nigel and his big book of spin

weres the problem with them figures faxy babe??

sky very rarely pull in big numbers

No problem with the figures used.....the wording is quite clever though. It declares 57k1 for England Union, THEN comments on wendyball on SKY ignoring the fact the Union was on SKY. It also mentions the Saturday sporting choices but ignores the 2.4 million peak Wales v SA got on BBC 2 from 5pm onwards.....

have to admire Nigel...he really is getting VFM from those "spin classes" he's been on......(spin as in PR, not the mad bike going nowhere stuff)

May well be the cider company, as Kingstone Press belong to Aston Manor drinks- but nonetheless, that's pretty positive.

ah but is not that just the fans switching over

from the England rl match,it proberly peaked until they realised it was union and then switched off

and the figure dropped

That'll be it

Wales Union game and England League game both got same TV viewing of 2.2m, not 2.4m as you stated for the Union game.

Not what I heard, but either way, a cracking result for the RL. The point was that Knock-down Nigel was happy to spin against a Pay TV audience but no mention of the FTA union...maybe he's listened to the voice of reason and he's started to learn from the IRB

I have no problem with RL using positive spin. They did it for ticket sales and look where that got us!

Fact is Sky probably paid a shed more money for smaller viewing figures for other sports, about time we started to shout to the world how popular our sport really is.

so England Vs France is on bbc at 8pm saturday evening? would think BBC2 with strictly on bbc1.

coming up against xfactor and strictly

Mmmm that is going to be a tough spot to get big viewing figures