The Virtual Terrace • RFL Statement on Overseas Clubs
roofaldo2 wrote:
When have these rights been offered to other broadcasters for them to turn them down? The assumption that they're not worth showing is one that could be easily challenged by looking at Bradford's streaming numbers from last year in league 1. They streamed nearly every game last year, home and away, it had no measurable effect on reducing crowd numbers actually attending games and was pulling in a few thousand views on each game. I can't believe that if the other clubs in the league were given the chance of a platform to actually grow their brands it would be to the betterment of the game overall in this country. If your team is on the telly, your sponsors get better exposure on a national level and as such will pay more for their name to be seen. More money means teams can bring in better players, or better yet expand their own youth set ups and bring through their own home grown players. But being able to afford better players and better coaches means a better quality product being shown on the TV which makes for better viewing figures.
The rights to broadcast the Championship were given to (they paid no money for them) Premier Sports a few seasons prior to the current Sky deal being signed. All games broadcast had to be played on thursday nights which did negatively impact numbers attending (the clubs were very vocal about this). Premier Sports then dropped planned coverage of the Championship at very short notice having found out that the upcoming season would be the last one they would broadcast as from the season after that one the rights were to transfer to Sky (as part of the current Sky deal). Hardly a declaration that the product was of value to them in attracting viewers and advertisers (the things tv networks care about) as they were happy to immediately lose any audience and advertising connected to Championship RL. Sky who now hold the rights to broadcast it, in the main part don't bother to do so, suggesting that it holds little to no value in terms of attracting either audiences or advertising revenue to them other than when leveraging the trans-Atlantic angle by broadcasting Toronto (even though very few of their games are competitive).
Bradford's streaming of games in League 1 may not have negatively affected crowds (though we have no other seasons in the third tier for Bradford to compare it with to accurately ascertain this). However Bradford were simply livestreaming games that were played at a day and time chosen by Bradford, or their opponents for away games, (chosen to optimise home attendance as all teams do) rather than at a day and time dictated by a tv network. Games played on a thursday night and livestreamed then would likely have seen more of an impact on bums on seats in those games. Comparing the club's own livestream with a tv slot dictated by the tv network in terms of impact on crowds is comparing apples with oranges.
As I have said peviously I would be very happy if we could see a day when the non SL clubs could stand to make money out of selling the broadcast rights for their competitions as a separate package but I cannot see it ever happening. We have enough trouble getting more than one broadcaster to bid for our top flight.
Statistics: Posted by wiganermike — Sun Apr 14, 2019 2:05 pm — Replies 36 — Views 1431