Channel 4 To Broadcast Super League in 2022




Super League has to announced a landmark deal which will see Channel 4 broadcast Betfred Super League matches in 2022. This initial two-year partnership will see matches broadcast free-to-air for the first time in the competition’s 26-year history.
 
Channel 4 will broadcast 10 live games each season, starting with eight-time Champions Leeds Rhinos hosting Warrington Wolves on Saturday 12 February (12:30). The remaining nine games will be spread across the season and will include two end of season Play-Off fixtures.
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Excellent!

Yeah, brilliant news this. Look at the SL execs getting something right!!

Great news. Congratulations to Ken Davy and his team plus of course Channel 4.
It's now up to the fans to respond and reflect the popularity of this move in the viewing figures.

Excellent news, next important announcement will be streaming the live games not to be featured on Sky / C4 and what the quality of that looks like for a streaming service. Will we be able to buy access to individual games, all games, Warrington games?

Terrestrial coverage, Live Streaming, World Cup, potential league restructure and potential £100m 'strategic investment', there will be a lot going on in the next 2 years ahead of the next Sky negotiation for 2024 - if (big if) the RFL/SL can get the above right, we can hopefully be in a much better position.

Really pleased with the terrestrial deal though - be interested to see what the income from it was although most important thing will be more and hopefully new people watching the sport. Hopefully we can build on it so its a weekly offering rather than sporadically across the year.

Very happy with the terrestrial coverage, it is only possible due to Super League negotiating a deal with Sky that removes their exclusive rights for all league games.
Does anyone have any details of the contract value for Channel4 coverage of Super League?
Not sure about live streaming of all Super League games, it is important that fans actually attend the games, and saturation coverage could deter this.

Great news. Hopefully it will be approached in a professional way for national broadcast, and we won’t have to be subjected to the tailored ‘flat cap and ferret’ stereotyping we have seen on the other channels. Although to be fair the BBC has been pretty good the last few years.

I think this can only be viewed as excellent news.

Very good news
It's up to the fans now to support C4 by watching all the games

So that's Leeds as the first game, Catalans at Magic weekend, are they just going to announce the fixtures one game at a time this year....??

Friday the fixtures are announced I think.

Spiffing

Great news ,the game needs a wider audience.

Just got to hope they get a half decent commentator /presentation team, that don't deal in clichés. I'm sick to death of the "bottoms" on Sky.

Quote ="easyWire"Friday the fixtures are announced I think.'" https://leagueunlimited.com/news/36750- ... -fixtures/

Quote ="easyWire"Friday the fixtures are announced I think.'" https://leagueunlimited.com/news/36750- ... -fixtures/

Agreed. Let's also hope the camera crew know the action is on the pitch and not the face of the coach sat in the stand.........

I hope this is done well by channel 4, it's brilliant to have a Saturday afternoon match on free to air and hopefully the other 9 games will be good lineups as well. I really hope they get good viewing figures and increase demand to watch televised rugby league.

Whatever happened to that Jon Champion guy often did the BBC matches before Dave Woods. He also did the football I think. He was very good, and also seemed to have great knowledge of RL.

I was only thinking the same, myself. He was good.
Clive Tyldesley wasn't too bad, either. Although, if I had a tenner each time he namedropped a famous RL person he'd spoken to that week, I'd be a rich man.

Seems a good idea more games on TV,hope this does not encourage people to stay at home to watch matches rather than go through the turnstyles ,just a thought.

I don't think so. In fact, I think the opposite is true.

More eyes on the game on TV = more fans = more people wanting to go to matches.

Heard Hemmings and Steve coming out of retirement

. No only joking but it’s great to have a new tv partner just got to hope they get it right and as someone said let’s not turn into a flat cap viewing mess.

We could start by making the game more attractive and entertaining like it was about 10 years ago and previous to that. Hopefully the people who run the game will realise 80 minutes of five drives and a kick doesn’t draw in new supporters.

Was interesting to hear Powell talk about how no scrums (which is obviously going) and 6 again (which is staying) negatively affected the game in his view as it meant teams were much more likely to play centrally trying to generate a quick ruck and the 6 again, rather than playing with a bit of width to make breaks on the edges.

We are too quick sometimes to introduce rule changes / adaptations rather than use a set of rules that have made the game what it is.

Very true. In my view the game was better with

1. Substitutes instead of "interchanges"
2. Semblance of a scrum to leave room for scrum plays and space for the backs.
3. A bit more aggression / physical confrontation.