Not pleasant reading about the state of RL

[morley pie eater]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/ ... per-league

[widdenoldboy]

TBF, this could be written with a different spin.

Some valid points raised but would we see such a negative piece about any other sport?

[endoman]

Full of errors also. Which star players have Salford sold? RU is hardly is a great position at club level, don't think many sports these days survive without outside cash injection.

[the pieman]

nothing new really and probably written by a RU journo to put RL down

whilst there's no doubt that the sport could do with a cash injection, we havent seen clubs going bust like there has been in RU in the last couple of years. yes, there has been some problems but the clubs have pulled through it

i think the proof in the IMG pudding will be the next TV deal and whether any of the work we are seeing / dont see gets us a bigger TV deal than the current one. We pull decent viewing figures in for Sky and are one of the most watched sports on the channel, so i dont get how they can justify the drop in money. I think and its a direct comparison, that the advertising revenue could be one of the key influencers and hopefully something that is being worked on as RU would have a brand like Land Rover and we have Reliant Robin adverts for example, so more targeted to the respective audiences

[moto748]

probably written by a RU journo to put RL down

Not the case, AB is a rugby league journalist who has been covering the sport for many years.

[Mike]

I couldn't get past the headline. "Bright lights of Vegas cannot dim the dark clouds over super league"

Bright lights don't dim things.
And anyway you don't want to dim dark clouds you want to clear them away or brighten them.
Terrible headline.

[nathan_rugby]

nothing new really and probably written by a RU journo to put RL down

whilst there's no doubt that the sport could do with a cash injection, we havent seen clubs going bust like there has been in RU in the last couple of years. yes, there has been some problems but the clubs have pulled through it

i think the proof in the IMG pudding will be the next TV deal and whether any of the work we are seeing / dont see gets us a bigger TV deal than the current one. We pull decent viewing figures in for Sky and are one of the most watched sports on the channel, so i dont get how they can justify the drop in money. I think and its a direct comparison, that the advertising revenue could be one of the key influencers and hopefully something that is being worked on as RU would have a brand like Land Rover and we have Reliant Robin adverts for example, so more targeted to the respective audiences

If the RFL are not happy with the money from Sky then they are free to go out to market and get a deal from somewhere else. The only reason that didn't happen previously, despite the dramatic drop, is because there clearly were not any better offers on the table.

Why would Sky pay 40m when they can pay 20m?

Now I do agree seperate to the above that Sky will also need to think about the impact to Rugby in the long term in terms of quality, viewing figures by providing such a low figure. If they upped it by 10m to 30, how and where would they retain that extra 10m?

[fozzie58]

To me it’s fairly clear there wasn’t much interest from the wider broadcasters let’s be fair channel 4 had been given a couple of years free and still couldn’t make a deal for the sport so it was only ever sky who was realistically interested and I suspect the next tv deal will be a weak as this one too,I just don’t see anyone but sky being interest in our sport.