Today the Premier League announced a staggering 70% increase in the revenue they will receive for the broadcasting rights, over £3bn





Anyway for me the most interesting thing to come out of this announcement was a quote from BSkyB chief executive Jeremy Darroch, "Whilst the cost is higher, we have capacity for this increase through the combination of excellent work on cost efficiency across the business and choices over other future spending"

For me this suggests 2 things; 1) Sky subscriptions are going to go up even more 2) Other sports, in particular rugby league will be affected.

It looks as though BT are looking at creating a new sports channel & ESPN will no longer be showing Premiership football. Will this work in rugby league's favour?

Just means the coverage of football is increasing. Nothing new.

Apparently BT have the 'first choice' games which means they will get the best fixtures. This could work in our favour.

Be interesting what the next cricket and union TV deals are

Sky is coming to the end of a prize freeze in September 2012, so subs are due an increase.

Sky really can't put it's prices up any more surely? They are already horrendous as it is.

What they should be doing is creating seperate channels for the F1 and for Premier League football and making these seperate paid for subscriptions. Why the F1 channel is free is beyond me, that must be costing an absolute fortune to acquire, produce and promote.

I'd happily pay a sub for just RL.

they need to build an audience first, if they went straight for charging people then not many would have gone for it. by giving a year for free they can get people 'hooked' then start to charge.

I do. Its called Premier Sports!

BT have got first dibs on 18 weekends, and will be showing games in the Saturday lunch time slot.

ESPN will be looking a bit light on top level sport now, so I expect they will be interested in moving into other sports than footy in a bigger way.

As long as RL continues to bring in the viewing figures it does for SKY, we will remain a key sport in their portfolio, so they will want to continue paying a decent amount for it.

If Premier Sports had the Super League, SOO and Challenge Cup, along with the NRL and Championship, I would throw my money at them.

I understand that SKY did offer to increase the SL payment by 70%. However, the SL clubs rejected that increase in favour of a deal with Richard Branson's Virgin media empire, and a commitment on his part to paint 14 of his Virgin set-top digiboxes in the colours of SL clubs.

RFL spokesman Nigel Wood said "This is a great deal for SL clubs. Rather than cash, which is over-rated in any case, we'll have the incredibly valuable contribution of 14 households who have a set-top box in various exciting colours."

Asked whether he was satisfied that 14 colourful domestic appliances were worth more to the game than several million pounds of cold, hard cash, Wood went on : "Well, we did ask Richard whether he'd promise to only give those boxes to houses where the telly backs on to the window, so passers-by could see the team strips and be inspired to come along to their nearest club. However, he said no."

Dont give up your day job

Seconded.

I think it's far more likely that they will just withdraw from the UK rather than invest elsewhere.

I'd like to know what percentage of my Sky Sports fee goes to soccer and what goes to rugby league. I only really watch rugby league and feel annoyed that I help prima donnas to earn up to £200,000 per week.

Its a package, its what happens, and its never going to change. Sky would make less money allowing people to only pay for what they wanted rather than making everyone pay for everything.

And lets not forget that if that were the case, Sky would pay a hell of a lot less for RL.

100000 @ £500 pa = £50m in subs.
A £35m pa deal for RL split £20m SL1, £10M SL2 and £300k per club in the championship, £200k in C1 would transform our sport in 5 years.

I think they may want to make a profit on all the production costs of showing RL. It will be millions, so the 100,000 needs to be higher.

Assumptions are 100k purely for RL, ie what they could lose in subs, they then attract revenue from adverts. If they covered 60 games per annum then that would allow £250k per game costs plus advertising revenue.

Sky would get a decent return from 100k folk purchasing the package primarily for RL, even before the value it brings to the next 100k folk who watch RL on Sky etc

Last week SSN said that 50% of Sky RL viewers live in the south of England. I imagine the majority of these are casual viewers, and whilst they enjoy watching the greatest game of all I don't think many would be willing to pay an extra subscription to Premier Sports on top of their pre-existing sky bill. Moving to a small station would kill RL, for starters they wouldn't be able to offer the same money as sky, and being on SS1 is so valuable in terms of getting the sport out there.

This is of course wild speculation with no foundation to it, but I wonder whether in the next year or so Premier Sports would be interested in showing one game of SL a week along side sky and the French Operator? Their Championship coverage has been a relative success, and I am sure adding Super League to their portfolio would encourage more RL fans to subscribe.

I agree

Explain how ' relatively ' successful it has been , and the reasons for your opinion of it ?

From what I can gather, the Championship is the only thing they do themselves, as opposed to buy off other broadcasters and it is clearly done on a low budget, for example the gazebo they were stood under last night, contrast this to sky who have a wealth of experience, cameras, stats, portable studio etc- hence my use of '[irelatively[/i'.

Despite this I can't fault their coverage, plenty of analysis and post match reaction, which was lacking in Sky's coverage of the Championship, five minutes before KO and a quick interview with the man of the match after the game. They have also been rather innovative, audio from inside the dressing room, interviews with coaches at HT and of course wiring up the video ref for the audience to hear, something which I can see Sky introducing themselves soon enough.

Hope I have answered your question

So because you like the production quality, you term that as successful? , I'd suggest the viewing figures and extra revenue from advertising for both PS and the clubs themselves would be the measure of its success

Well that goes without saying. But that has been achieved thanks partly to the reasons I have mentioned. Don't quite see what you are trying to get at!

Probably that you are making stuff up without any evidence whatsoever. For all we know Premier Sports could be losing money on a weekly basis and wasting cash showing dire semi professional Rugby League.