Not sure why I said Warrington played Friday nights when not on TV. I think probably because my perception is shaped by seeing them on TV quite often playing in that particular timeslot, hence the error.

Same number of fixtures between those top 4 teams are televised by Sky every season since 2009. When those top 4 fixtures are scheduled makes little to no difference whatsoever to the overall season viewing figures.


There was a soccer World Cup in 2010 when England actually made it through to the knockout stages, yet Sky viewing figures for SL were higher back then.

To all you stattos with more knowledge than me on the subject:

Has the change to Thursday nights affected figures in any way? How do viewing figures compare to the Saturday 6pm games over the years?

Comparative viewing figures I have for Thursday and Saturday viewing figures are as follows...

[uSuper League fixtures on Sky (2008-2014)[/u
Saturday SL fixtures: 13,888k/108 = 128k average
Thursday SL fixtures: 3,243k/23 = 141k average

SL attendances appear to be affected more by Thursday night timeslots. 22 SL fixtures played on a Thursday this season saw a 10.6% fall in comparison to the same fixtures last year. That figure of 10.6% also compares unfavourably with an overall fall of 4.9% in SL attendances in 2014.

Total attendance for 22 Thursday night fixtures in 2014 = 193,901
Total attendance for same fixtures played in 2013 = 216,988
% decrease = [u-10.64%[/u

[uLargest comparative attendance losses relating to the above figures were...[/u
Wigan V Warrington - 20050 to 15656
Wakefield V Bradford - 8084 to 4049
Warrington V Wigan - 14028 to 11550
Wakefield V Widnes - 7543 to 3932
Leeds V Huddersfield - 15013 to 13104
St Helens V Warrington - 14715 to 12854

[uCurrent Viewing figures for 2014 are...[/u
Friday: 3179k/20 = 159k
Thursday: 1886k/15 = 126k
Saturday: 1373k/13 = 106k (mostly Catalan)
Sunday: 316k/2 = 158k
TOTAL: [u6754k/50 = 135k[/u

Erm... could it also be that some households can no longer afford Sky Sports packages etc....

My household is one of these, and I know many others who no longer subscribe - there are many reasons why attendance/viewing figures are down, we all have different lives/lifestyles

According to more recent reports, Sky's subscriber base has reached it's upper limit of 10.5 million (5 million HD customers) and any future increased profitability needs to be based upon a strategy of flogging extra services to existing customers like HD packages, phone line and broadband.

Sky do not divulge information with regard to how many of those 10.5 million current customers subscribe to Sky Sports packages but it's a reasonable guess that if their subscriber base has reached it's upper limit, it's unlikely that Sky Sports subscription packages have nosedived in the opposite direction. My guess is that it's movies which tend to get dropped first when people are feeling the pinch (after all, sport is the new opium of the people these days), which may explain the bombardment of offers available for Movie packages.

Has Premier Sports had any effect on these figures - showing 8 NRL games per week?

I would imagine subscriber numbers are relatively low but I cancelled Sky Sports in favour of Premier a couple of years ago and know quite a few other that did the same.

I guess people get fed up of paying their subscription fees to essentially fund football and an extra euro football channel

I also cancelled Sky in favour of Premier Sports. Is William Eve a RL fan? I only ask, because he seems to enjoy ragging the game.

To be fair there is plenty of choice

Do we even know how the viewing figures are collected and collated? By that I mean is there a difference between you or I sitting at home watching any game just because we are RL fans, there's nowt else on and we are in charge of the remote and someone gathering a group of friends and saying let's not bother with the M62 on a work night, I don't fancy watching on my jack let's all go down to the pub/social club to watch a big draw game?

Sky's viewing figures are down right across the board, not just RL. So it's something they need to look at themselves.

Can you provide evidence to back up that across-the-board assertion of yours?

I'd be genuinely interested to see data which provides proof of that.

The sad fact is, you actually would be interested!

I was wondering, do you have stats on how the percentage of one-legged Serbo-Croats called Ivan that own a ginger cat and work as a car park attendant, who view Boots n'All while eating a kebab has varied over the last decade?

www.barb.co.uk/resources/tv-fact ... 98-09?_s=4 Knock yerself out! Though I should have thought with the massive proloferation of channels, it would be obvious that each individual channel will get a smaller percentage of the total without someone demanding proof, lmao! bSkyb themselves have gone from what 4 or 5 channels to over a dozen.

www.barb.co.uk/resources/tv-fact ... 98-09?_s=4 Knock yerself out! Though I should have thought with the massive proloferation of channels, it would be obvious that each individual channel will get a smaller percentage of the total without someone demanding proof, lmao! bSkyb themselves have gone from what 4 or 5 channels to over a dozen.

You're out of your depth here AA.

I'd stick to discovering bundles of mail dumped by posties if I were you.

How is a BARB link to a multi-channel viewing summary circa 98 to 09 supposed to consist of evidence proving your earlier assertion?

Either you have evidence or you don't.

Well?

Lol, whatever

I'm sure we played wire on a Friday night this year at the HJ and that wasn't on Sky.

Has there been an investigation into allegations that william eve (serial stat miscreant) has been stat fixing BARB figures? Is the inquest still ongoing?

Whoever has him on twitter should give him loads of abuse until the matter has been resolved.

Perhaps there is also a consideration that more people now watch the games through a means other than those officially recorded by BARB / Sky ....??

Doubt he'll understand it, if he's not smart enough to figure, that going from 1 Channel, to 2, to 3, to 5, to 12, to 38, to 86 to over 150 channels is gonna make viewing figures per channel drop then he'll not appreciate any sarcasm nor understand any abuse, lmfao!

And as for not being able to figure out how to navigate BARB's particularly user-friendly site to get more up to date stats as per my "knock yerself out" invite, well.....that just beggars belief, rlmao!!!!!

If Moonie Crusader Pete is unable to back up his assertions, perhaps he should just admit so?

You have the website with the figures, go work it out for yerself, I'm not doing it for you!

It's up to you to back up your assertions with evidence, and it appears you have none.

Sky viewing figures for SL exhibit a downward trend since 2009 (the exception being 2012).

So I'll ask you again... how does your earlier link to some partial data concerning the period 1998 to 2009 back up your assertion?

Err, since when have I had to prove anything to you????

The link was the first link I plucked from Google for the BARB site, as I said "knock yerself out" your the one who wants the minutae, not me.

If you could just fathom how to navigate the site, you'd quickly realise there was no assertion, just a statement of fact. ALL TV viewing figures are down, partially down to over-proliferation of channels (that means too many channels by the way) and also to the increased access to alternate media resources (that means the internet, android apps', streaming etc.).

www.barb.co.uk/trendspotting/dat ... ewing?_s=4 This is perhaps a better example of the changing percentage of audience share over the years. 2003 v 2013 BBC 1....25.6 - 21.0 (down 4.6%) BBC 2....7.5 - 5.7 (down 1.8%) ITV....23.7 - 15.4 (down 8.3%) C4....6.8 - 4.9 (down 1.9%) C5....6.5 - 4.1 (down 2.4%) Other Channels....23.6 - 46.8 (up 23.2%)

www.barb.co.uk/trendspotting/dat ... ewing?_s=4 This is perhaps a better example of the changing percentage of audience share over the years. 2003 v 2013 BBC 1....25.6 - 21.0 (down 4.6%) BBC 2....7.5 - 5.7 (down 1.8%) ITV....23.7 - 15.4 (down 8.3%) C4....6.8 - 4.9 (down 1.9%) C5....6.5 - 4.1 (down 2.4%) Other Channels....23.6 - 46.8 (up 23.2%)