If the clubs are getting 2m (which they aren't) that would mean the RFL are getting £6m a year for administration. That's a crazy figure.

We can work it out pretty easily.

Clubs are getting about 1,6m from the tv deal plus some grants and donations to charitable donations etc. 146m/7/13 (SL clubs + rfl, the 13 shareholders of sle) = 1.6m

Whether you want to call it a 7 year deal, a 5 year deal or a 5 + 2 year deal is a little irrelevant. Over the next 7 years SL will receive 146m in tv rights.

The SL element of the deal is £146m. Over 5 years. Just because clubs have received a payment (not a full years worth) early makes no difference. It's a 5 year deal. It does not replace the current tv deal. It continues after the current one finishes.

It's £146m / 5 = £29.2m
Now if ALL of that went to SL clubs (ie none to RFL) that would = £2.43m per club per year.
But it's highly likely the RFL will take a cut. They'll have to. So that's would make it £2.246m per club per year.

Or if the current distribution system is maintained then the Championships clubs get a share too. Plus £2m is taken from the deal and shared equally to all the clubs.
That would make it:
£146m - £2m = £144m
£144m / 5 = £28.8m
£28.8m / 14 = £2.057m plus an equal share of the £2m.

This isn't about what the clubs are CURRENTLY getting as that's under the CURRENT TV deal. The new TV deal, which starts AFTER the current one ends, is £146m for 5 years. That some payments under that are brought forward is irrelevent to the amount and length of the deal.

We aren't getting 182m over the next 7 years. Clubs aren't getting over £2m when the new contract starts. The certainly aren't getting 2.5m

They are getting in total, with grants and a 'charitable contribution' about 1.8m but closer to 1.6m in just money. They were getting closer to 1.2m

We have signed a new 5 year deal. That deal means SL will get 146m over the next 7 years (including this one);

Pay TV makes money from subscriptions and advertising not from viewing figures. What if 100k of RL viewers also watch soccer and would have Sky TV anyway? What if only 10k of RU viewers also watch soccer and wouldn't have BT Sport if it wasn't for the RU. What if RU fans are happy to pay for a subscription but only watch 1 in 4 games? We got the best ever deal and a significant increase, that's a result and that's what business is about not about comparing yourselves endlessly to a sport that we split from 120 years ago.

The TV deal is broken down as follows :-

SLE £146.76m
Championship £14.58m
League One £1.82m
Challenge Cup & Internationals £20.04m
Charitable Foundations £17.80m

The share out of the SLE value is pretty complicated so I'll try to explain it as best I can.

Firstly, the RFL take a 10% cut of the full value as their fee for brokering the deal (previously SLE were paying ~15% to IMG for this). This leaves £132.08m to be shared out by SLE.

The clubs have already had £300k each of the deal as an advance payment (note - 14 clubs received this not 12) which accounted for a further £4.2m of the money. Furthermore, the 12 SL clubs are receiving top ups to the current deal this year and next year as advances against the next contract (£350k each this year, £400k each next year). This accounts for a further £9.0m of the money.

So, by the time the contract kicks in a total of £13.2m will already have been paid out to the clubs in advance.

This leaves £118.8m to be divided over 5 years between the members of SLE. There are of course 13 members of SLE - the 12 clubs and the RFL. Therefore, each member will receive £9.13m over the duration of the 5 year deal. Which equates to ~£1.825m per member per season.

So basically the entire premise of this thread was based on massively wrong figures and now we are into the debate of how much was the actual figure.

Surely somewhere it say the deal is for x years at y amount of money.

If a player signs a new contract for the next 3 years, they don't call it a 4 year deal. It's a 3 year extention to the current deal. Therefore a 3 year deal.

If the RFL have made a 5 year extention, that does not make it 7 years, because it was signed 2 years in advance.

Indeed, and thanks to the clarification from Derwent we now have all the answers

The rfl are taking nearly £30m between now and 2021? Plus the cc and international money? That is absolutely mental. What on earth are they doing with that money considering they have sport England money for amateur and youth development, and a grant for elite development. What are the spending so much money on?

No, I never claimed it didn't happen, it was pretty obvious I'd made a mistake, a bit like yours stating that RU were getting less, care to retract that or are you insisting that we are getting a better deal financially? Either way my point is still valid, we've being massively undersold.

My comparison of the total amount for the SKY deal of £182 over 5 years for almost everything makes it even worse when you break down what the ESL portion is. I would hazard a guess the RFL didn't even bother contacting other organisation's to try to get more, far too easy to say look, we got all this. When 'this' isn't what we are worth, not by a long chalk.
The problem being that that is what the clubs are stuck with, there is little if any room for manoeuvre re salaries, in fact as it stands the amount of money a club can spend on its squad is approximately 30% less in real terms since the £1.8M cap was introduced. That it hasn't increased is (in part) a direct result of the failure of the RFL to market and garner a higher sum for the sport.

No, your mistake was claiming our sport was being "massively undersold" before you realised your figures were £92m out. We're not being massively undersold in any way.

RU is a bigger sport, at league level not by much but it is. Their TV deal is bigger than ours, not by much but it is and they've had to settle for BTSport which has significantly less subscribers than SKY. I wonder why didn't SKY outbid BT.

This massively undersold TV deal was voted for by ALL SL chairmen, except a multimillionnaire who's new to the sport and whose decisions so far have a left quite a bit to be desired.

This thread is ridiculous.

But if all the "ridiculous" threads were removed it would be a very quiet forum

I think it's funny people talk about BT Sport being a channel nobody has, the last reported figures from BT state "BT has said it has around 3 million direct BT Sport customers and with wholesale deals is in around 5 million homes. It has also signed up 19,000 pubs, clubs, hotels and other commercial premises." I don't think that's a channel that nobody has somehow.

The RFL signed a deal without going out to tender and inviting bids, either the RFL were scared that SKY would walk away and BT wouldn't bid or they're idiots, I'll let you choose.

I have BT broadband so I get BT sport free. There is nothing on the channels that I would want to watch so I don't and that includes ESPN.
BT sports is wasted on me and I am probably not alone but am counted as a "SUBSCRIBER".

I've read some e on here over the years but this takes it to a new level. It turns out 'massively undersold' is actually 'potentially slightly undersold but still significantly the best deal we've ever had' depending on your view of how much difference a tendering process would have made. I am generally in favour of tendering so would have gone for that as a principle but don't have the RFL advantage of knowing their market

On top of the completely inaccurate opening post we've had somebody post a link to an article explaining it and somebody who's posted a simple breakdown both of which people have ignored to continue to make factually incorrect posts. Why do we bother?

Me too, never watched it but it comes free so I am a "subscriber".

I would not get BT sports until they roll BT cable in this area.

Watching anything through the phone wires is hardly worth watching at all.

Thank you.
Interesting to see that the RFL clip the ticket twice with their 10% of the total fee then getting another 1/13th over the 5 years.

True, they do quite well out of it.

Let's hope they are spending it well.

On cakes, pies and biscuits for Nigel.

At least the 10% "fee" is staying in the game instead of being paid out to external consultants.

The RFL have an annual wage bill of ~£6m per year and lose money on staging events like Magic Weekend. They also distribute some of their income back to the clubs, particularly the community game, via grant funding for various things.

Without this income it's difficult to see how events like Magic and taking internationals to the Olympic Stadium could happen as it is the RFL that underwrites the losses on these events.

Additionally, if the RFL is profitable then the profits are redistributed to the member clubs as they are the shareholders of the company.

What? You mean I can't be outraged over the sports governing body using money to actually run the sport?

Who the hell are you?
And what could you possibly want?

If this 30m from SL is paying for things like the community game and the international game, then what is the money from sport England for the community game and the 20m from sky for the internationals and cc paying for?

That is a lot of money they are taking, it's not inconsequential especially for an organisation that wouldn't underwrite the WCS and that has said that things like on the road games etc are down to the clubs to put on and underwrite and when we have seen a huge cut in development officers etc.

If I were an owner of an SL club looking at the rfl taking 15m immediately and then another 10m over the course of the contract from SLE, and then another 4m a year for the CC and internationals (plus more from the bbc) I wouldn't think I was getting Vue for money. It seems very top heavy that we are giving 1.8m a year to clubs to run a side in the comp but it takes 6m a year to the rfl administer it.

People tell me it's too risky for us to have a proper tour or a proper WCS in big stadiums, that we are a small game that can't afford this that and the other, there is nigh on 6m a year sloshing around the pot.

You've obviously not taken big Nigel's lunch allowance into account.

I see no reason why the RFL would lose money on Magic or big internationals. In fact they should both make a profit, especially Magic where the local authorities are competing for the event and the 60k visitors to their city for the weekend.