Premier Sports to become exclusive home of Monday Night Rugby League The Betfred Championship will have a new home from 2022, as the RFL today confirms an extensive and exciting two-year broadcast partnership with Premier Sports. Under the partnership, Premier Sports will provide live and exclusive coverage from the start of the season in early 2022 to the Play-Offs in the autumn culminating in the Million Pound Game – and including every match of the Summer Bash featuring all 14 clubs in a single venue on the same weekend. Subscription currently costs £12.99 a month and Premier Sports is available across a range of platforms, including online. READ MORE ON THIS STORY...

Premier Sports to become exclusive home of Monday Night Rugby League The Betfred Championship will have a new home from 2022, as the RFL today confirms an extensive and exciting two-year broadcast partnership with Premier Sports. Under the partnership, Premier Sports will provide live and exclusive coverage from the start of the season in early 2022 to the Play-Offs in the autumn culminating in the Million Pound Game – and including every match of the Summer Bash featuring all 14 clubs in a single venue on the same weekend. Subscription currently costs £12.99 a month and Premier Sports is available across a range of platforms, including online. READ MORE ON THIS STORY...

General good news increasing exposure for the Championship. Doesn't say if it is worth anything for the clubs. Monday night away at Whitehaven might be tough for our part-time boys. Premier sports shows French Top 14 and the Welsh/Scottish/Irish/Italian/South African RU competition so might have some expousre to general rugby lovers. NetgemTV offering might be a good deal if you want to watch in HD and don't have Sky and would like some more channels thrown in. The general internet stream from Premier Sports can be a bit flaky.

If they do pay anything for the rights it will be a first. Championship TV rights have never generated a penny, going right the way back to the old Northern Ford Premiership renouncing their part of the first SL / Sky contract so they could find a TV deal of their own. It's always been done on a costs-only basis.

Either way, it's good that the lower leagues will have some sort of TV exposure.

Seeing as how they are giving the rights away, would the BBC not have been interested.,
Going on a free to air platform would have meant that the viewing figures would be significantly greater than being on Premier, which would surely increase interest in the sport, this could only have been good for the clubs participating.
The BBC cannot compete with Pay per view channels and have lost a lot of sport. To be given Championship RL surely would have been attractive to them.
This may well be an opportunity missed. I doubt the take up on Premier Sports will be massive.

Crikey, the BBC could have titled it Floodlit Rugby League and put it on BBC2! I used to love that show back in the day!

Why not ?

Wouldn't surprise me if they were offered it, the Beeb might have said no. The Championship is a bit like after the Lord Mayor's show. Not a draw outside the M62 nor within it one suspects. If no money being paid what is the point? I'm not interested in paying £13 per month on top of other subscriptions I have.

How many people are going to pay Premier Sports, for watching in the majority part time players on a Monday evening? We need to know IF any money has been paid, and how much?

Would it not have been better to give it to a broadcaster available to a wide audience on free viewing TV?

As most likely, the TV Rights were given away. Giving it to a free to air broadcaster would surely have been best, instead of placing them with a minor Pay To View sports channel.
You are so right Jaybs, It is not really a satisfactory outcome and not much reason to rejoice.

No doubt Ralph the Rimmer thinks it's a bit of a coup!

It’s a drag to put the boot in every time something comes up but having thought about this deal it is lose lose all around. The number of likely subscribers and added content value to the TV company is so relatively small they can’t have paid anything so that’s a loss for the clubs and the RFL. The cost of hiring a presenter and filming the games will probably exceed the revenue from added content for current subscribers plus new subscribers interested in RL - so a loss for the TV company. And the players most apparently part time will have to travel up on a typical workday Monday with knock on impact for rest of working week - so a loss for them. The attendance at a Monday night game is likely to be lower than a weekend game-loss for the clubs and for supporters who would have gone to a Saturday/ Sunday game.
Likely additional visibility for the game - low. Likelihood of persuading Sky that others are interested in paying for RL rights - low. Sigh!

It's all very well saying "give it to a broadcaster" but said broadcaster has to be interested in showing it, and it's obvious no-one is. And I don't blame them - it's a part-time, second tier competition in a regional sport. Why would the BBC, ITV, C4 etc be interested in showing it? The only alternative to Premier Sports is doing it in-house on OurLeague, and it looks like the RFL would prefer the safe bet, which is reasonable.

If they couldn't give it away to a "free to air" broadcaster, it shows how low the rugby league stock has fallen. Clearly apart from their Challenge Cup efforts, the Beeb are clearly targeting their funding at Women's sport like Football & Union. ITV might have found a home for RL on ITV4 if it had anyone capable of selling the sport properly but it doesn't.

May well be the sign of things to come for SL too in the years ahead

The BBCs commitment to equality of sports coverage regardless of gender (or perhaps interest) is absolute. It’s interest in ensuring a northern sport gets coverage, less so.

Having said that they moved their HQ to Salford so they may feel they have done all they need for the North. The cabbies of Salford will be rolling in it with all those return fares to Islington, Mill Hill and Finchley for the stars commuting to the new HQ.

How many part-time, second tier competitions - in any sport - get terrestrial TV coverage?

Not sure Nadera 78 that the part time comes into it. 2nd tier makes it hard, being mostly played in towns very few may have heard of & fewer care about makes it harder so you need someone like Heart to sell it. But SL is hardly able to sell itself either & as Sky have intimated before, the lack of geographical spread across the country will always limit the big corporates that are attracted to Football, Union, F1 & the likes.

I would love to see a curriculum of his success stories in Rugby League! it will be a very very small piece of paper, and he received around £280K

Does this help jaybs?

Ralph Rimmer

Ralph Rimmer was appointed CEO of the Rugby Football League in July 2018, having taken the role on an interim basis in January 2018.

He has been a member of the RFL Board since 2013 after joining the organisation as Chief Operating Officer in October 2010.

He has a wealth of experience at every level of the game, coupled with extensive knowledge in stadia and leisure development.

He played community rugby league for many years as a junior and senior for Ulverston ARLFC and went on to captain the Liverpool University team and play at student international level, before playing for Wakefield side, Stanley Old Boys.

He began his professional career within the sport in South Yorkshire in 1991 as a Development Officer with Doncaster. He then took up a similar role with Sheffield Eagles three years later, going on to become General Manager and then Chief Executive of the then Super League club.

Following the club’s historic Challenge Cup Final victory over Wigan at Wembley in 1998, Ralph went on to spend five years as the Chief Executive at Huddersfield Giants before moving on to the board as a non-executive director and taking on the role as the managing director of the stadium company, Kirklees Stadium Development Ltd.

Ralph spent four years as a non-executive director of Huddersfield Town AFC, helping to take the club out of administration; and also managed the Ireland national rugby league team from 1997 to 2002 (including the 2000 Rugby League World Cup) and the Yorkshire Origin team in 2002. He was also non-executive Chairman of The Sporting Pride Community Trust, in Huddersfield, between 2007 and 2010.

As Managing Director of KSDL he was Project Lead on the £2m stadium redevelopment in 2007 and also on the £150m The HD One Leisure Development. He acted as a management consultant on several stadia developments including; Leigh Sports Village, Colchester United FC Stadium and also the Salford City Stadium.

Nothing here about his rugby ball shaped head. In my opinion. a big omission and then there is his nice line in natty green country style suits which I think should get a mention.

Right place at the right time? a lot of jobs!

Sadly despite my desire to see the back of Ralph Rimmer. He is not going to resign from a job that pays him a lot more than the Prime Minister!
Change must come or the sports decline will continue, ultimately leading to its demise.

Agree completely, and the review panel for the future of the game with Ralph, Saints chairman Eamonn McManus & Leeds Rhinos CEO Gary Hetherington does not inspire me in the least.

Same with the plaudits of St Helens being the Grand Final winners for the third year on the row! praise was given to the referee by most journalists, I thought he was inconsistent to say the least, why does how video referee not advise the referee as with the NRL Bunker of wrong decisions? two made by Referee Liam I question, and the serious error with the linesman, with the penalty by Catalan, judged completely wrongly! I do not agree with the patting back of the ball into play, if it has crossed the libe for me it is Out!

Agree with you jaybs crosses the line its out as in football. But we have seen silly stuff in Union where players have played the ball over the line just by jumping & now we have cricketers running over the boundary line to pat the ball back into play & catch it. It's just not cricket, well it is but you know what I mean.

Sad the Cats didn't win but hey ho. Did Saints get investigated in the end for covid breach jaybs or was it all brushed under the carpet?

Quote ="Deadcowboys1"Agree with you jaybs crosses the line its out as in football. But we have seen silly stuff in Union where players have played the ball over the line just by jumping & now we have cricketers running over the boundary line to pat the ball back into play & catch it. It's just not cricket, well it is but you know what I mean. Sad the Cats didn't win but hey ho. Did Saints get investigated in the end for covid breach jaybs or was it all brushed under the carpet?'" https://www.sthelensstar.co.uk/sport/19 ... ol-breach/

Quote ="Deadcowboys1"Agree with you jaybs crosses the line its out as in football. But we have seen silly stuff in Union where players have played the ball over the line just by jumping & now we have cricketers running over the boundary line to pat the ball back into play & catch it. It's just not cricket, well it is but you know what I mean. Sad the Cats didn't win but hey ho. Did Saints get investigated in the end for covid breach jaybs or was it all brushed under the carpet?'" https://www.sthelensstar.co.uk/sport/19 ... ol-breach/

You couldn't make it up, not much integrity there. A covid breach is a covid breach. Failing to fulfill a fixture is failing to fulfill a fixture. So much for the integrity of the competition. Clearly the Championship has higher standards than SL.



Fingers crossed Toulouse smash Fev tonight if the Officials allow them to.