Can anyone see a time when Sky will want to show more games? I am surprised with all the new digital channels that a FTA provider hasn't made a bid for some games, or at the least bought the rights off Sky to show them later in the week.

Anyone who thinks that Sky care very much about RL is seriously deluded. Sky care about football, that is it, the rest is just filler. Which is why, in the absence of any serious broadcast competitor, they will always only pay the bare minimum that it takes to keep the game at a certain level of professionalism and provide them with relatively cheap prime time sport in the football off-season. You can have as many new teams as you like but Sky will only pay what they have to. There is no logical reason for them to do anything other than that.

Yes, I suspect you are.

Add £1.2m extra loss onto the reported results of each club, and some (sponsorship etc), and then tell me which clubs - or their backers - could stand that?

Correct, however, it would appear that we are the only sport that went fully proffessional on the back of the tv money. I could be wrong on this.

RU.

The problem is the lack of competition for the broadcasting rights. Setanta were the only serious attempt to crack SKY's sporting monopoly, and look what happened there. The BBC will shell out for the directors' old school friends down at Twickers, but that's it, and under the incoming Cameron Government, the BBC will find itself even less likely to be able to do anything Murdoch isn't keen on.

It's hard to see where a competitor to SKY could come from, unless one of the major US networks decided it wanted to start a European operation. If that were the case, then RL would be a tasty morsel because of its viewer numbers, but... BUT.... it's not enough on it's own. The only sport in this country which will sell enough subscriptions to make an operation viable is
soccer. That's why Murdoch will pay through the nose for that, because he knows that by puchasing soccer he's effectively purchasing the sports broadcasting market as a whole.

I can't really envisage a situation in which SKY isn't the only game in town. That sucks. We effectively have to rely on them continuing to see the need for RL to be fully professional in order to bring in the subscriptions and advertising they want.

why are the other FTA channels in teh UK not interested in showing sport? I always thought sport was a high audience event for TV channels? I know it isn't cheap to show live sport but if there is an audience, and with loads of channels these days to fill I'm surprised there isn;t more interest. Or is it just that SKY pays for exclusive rights and the RFL have never dared challenge this by putting it out on the open market?

I would suspect thats the case.

Will never happen smokey, like sayin the two hulls or, leeds and bradford could unite under one banner. cas fans and fev fans will never ever support a team called wakefield, and since castleford and featherstone combinedhave about 2/3 of the districts rl support the district will never unite under one banner. no one from castlford, featherstone, pontefract or knottingley considers themselves as being in anyway part of wakefield, even parts of normington are of the same opinion. The council reorganisation was a beurocratic change not one in the identity of the areas. If leeds was for some reason swallowed up into the area of bradford council would you coinsider yourself from bradford? would you suddenly want to become a bulls supporter?

there is actually a wakefield fan on the cas board asking if the district should be split up into castleford and wakefield just to give you an idea of how much we are united in this district.

However i do agree with you that both wakefield and castlford are at a crossroads and the next few years will be the differance between success and many more years in sl and being dropped down to the championship.

Give a FTA a free deal for the right coverage, watch merchandise/crowds/sponsorship rise and it will quickly replace lost revenue.

The clubs unable to adapt will move down a peg and those in a better position to do so will move up. The gap between divisions would be more breachable.

Sorry but could not disagree more.

If you take £1.2m (minimum) out of every club's income, with little warning, many will go straight to the wall. Their financial situation is so tenuous. They simply cannot replace that revenue overnight, if at all. Leeds could probably stand the initial shock - you can doi that when you are owned by a plc and you made a mint from selling a cricket ground - and a club with a rich owner prepared to stump up that much cash on TOP of what he already does could ride the initial storm until or unless he said "stakes too high - I fold", but it would immediately kill any other clubs. And £1.2m is a hell of a lot of revenue to make up - for example, you would need around 12.5k more on the gate EACH GAME to achieve that. From day 1. If indeed you could fit them in.

And you are IMO extremely extremely näive if you think crowds will rise substantially. Why should they? Especially since half the competition will have been blown into oblivion before the season even starts, and which non-SL clubs could immediately step up to SL level - and SL costs? Widnes, if O'Connor put his hand much much further in his pocket, and who else? You would start the first season with a handful of clubs. At best.

And as for sponsorship...the big deals come from the brands being seen on TV anyway. So why on EARTH would sponsorship rise substantially? If you think viewing figures would rocket through a seriously weakened competition being shown on a FTA I fear you are way too optimistic.

\
as usual you would be wrong

As usual i couldnt care less what you think. Troll. Leave the discussions to people who care about the game. Thanks

Interesting argument, but here's another dimension.

Never mind the clubs - what if the RFL themselves found themselves in administration? What would happen then?

An Aussie tour, pretty damn sharpish.

, whats up boys , the sport not as important as YOUR club , not forgetting that you are all RL fans before you're club fans

Yeah right

you should only comment about things which are true.

this would mean much less commentry.

the BBC were interested in the SL rights previously when the RFL was holding off from Sky but their offer was less.

pleased to help

Not the 2 FT divisions of 10 logic that was suggested a few years ago, 27 games and play offs, 1 up 1 down. 50% SL2 to SL1. Expand game without getting thrashed every week or having to buy a team of past it aussies/kiwis. Accomodating all clubs who had shown SL ambition, ie Fax , Widnes, Leigh and possibly Fev from last Franchise bids plus Toulouse and Cumbria. Drop overseas to 1 in SL2 and ringfence for 3 years to allow other ambitious clubs to plan and grow.

Link/evidence?

Could easily have happened in the past, pretty difficult nowadays.

Large proportion of RFL income comes from Sport England and has lots of strings attached in terms of what it gets spent on, as it all is monitored pretty closely. There have been other sports were this has happened (hockey) and Sport England works pretty hard to keep individual governing bodies on the right path financially.

Obviously, If the government reduces public spending on sport, then the RFL income will take a cut and development officer posts etc. will go.

Leeds and Bradford dont have a banner to unite under, but if they did, and it was needed, then i would support that a club under that banner, yes, i have consistantly said the game means more to me than my club,

and i dont doubt some Cas and Fev fans would never support a team with Wakefield in the name, i think the number is much lower than you imagine, when Cas and Wakefield are at a similar level, it is easy to say you will never support a 'Wakefield' side, when Cas are removed and the choice is a 'Wakefield' team or nothing its a much more difficult decision

If in the next few years one club doesnt move forward it will be swallowed by the other, If neither move forward then a merger is really the only option,

and your point re: the district etc. You have to remember, Kids dont care what happend 15 years before they were born. The only identity Cas has is the RL side, outside of that its no different to the numerous areas of Wakefield district, and you remove that, Kids arent going to ignore the game because they are angry at a decision regarding a Cas club they barely knew.

Besides, there are 35k people in Cas, in a district ten times that size, if the district is that parochial, there is only a small amount of people in Cas that a 'wakefield' club couldnt tap in to

Viewing figures would shoot up, whatever the level the game is played on, if you put a 2 hour video of Dally Messenger looking in the mirror talking to his 'friend' for two hours at 8pm on a friday night on ITV or the BBC at least 3m people would watch, likely much more for a saturday.

as such sponsorship would shoot up massively, as would crowds

Clubs would make up a fair amount of the money they lose in TV rights very quickly though not all of it,

BUT: The TV rights we get take this into account, Sky pay extra because we are missing out on these things, they have to, if ITV offered three quarters of what Sky do, the RFL would say bye-bye to Rupert very quickly

While you're on

i would think so,

There are apparently plans to put more corporate opportunities in the southstand without lowering the capacity,

though i dont think the design has been set in stone yet

The thing is, I don't buy the sponsorship rise argument. After all, the CC has been a guaranteed fixture on BBC for years, and despite audiences in the millions, we've really struggled to find a decent sponsor for it. I don't see why that would change. We also have an image problem - sponsors don't just hand over cash for exposure - they want to associate their brand with something they feel is appropriate to it. Big international companies sponsor RU because they see it - rightly - as a wealthy sport played and watched on the whole by above-average wealthy people. RL, like it or not, has a very different public image, and the sort of companies who want to market to that demographic don't have large sponsorship accounts.