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According to the business news on ITV, current BT Vision subscribers are up in arms over this deal, with the extra financial burden levied on their subs to help pay for it. Saying if they wanted Premier Footie & RU in the first place, they would have paid for it on Sky, who offer much greater coverage, esp. the soccer.
There's only 700,000 of them overall, so are predicting a huge churn rate when this begins.
There's not that many union-only subscribers to Sky (their viewing figs) so there will be little benefit of cross-overs.
At the end of the day, we'll have to wait and see, but the economics will dictate and I don't know too many people right now financially attracted to this expensive package.

Nezza Faz wrote:.
At the end of the day, we'll have to wait and see, but the economics will dictate and I don't know too many people right now financially attracted to this expensive package.

BT Vision has always been quite cheap but you never got a great deal for it IMO anyway!

They are launching a separate sports channel which I assume would cost extra and googling it I see a price of an extra £10 a month so I am not sure why existing customer who won't have to buy it are complaining. Unless the rest of the services is being downgraded in some way.

BT V are also paying £246m per season for the soccer games. So that is £284m per season for soccer and RU. That is £405 per subscriber with their current 700K.

Sky has 10.3m TV customers and are paying £2.28 BILLION pounds for 116 soccer games a season over three years. £6.53m per game.

On soccer alone that is £74 per Sky subscriber.

Clearly both Sky and BT are using sport as a loss leader and BT V is doing so more than Sky at the moment.

I presume they both do this to attract advertising, phone and broadband customers. BT V will have to grow their subscribers to reduce that average of £405 which is clearly the idea anyway but really for a company of BT's size £284m is quite small change.

The question we should really be asking is not how BT V can afford it but why when RU can sell an inferior product for £38m a season do we end up giving the main sponsorship of the sport away for free to Stobarts Lorries!

Dave, I couldn't agree with you more in the devaluing of the crown jewels of the RFL's main competition.

I believe this was majorly the work of Richard Lewis, who of course is no more, but his actions have made the job of attracting mainline sponsors extremely difficult now to negotiate forward - with a starting point of zero !

Can't imagine a supposed 'businessman' with this undermining philosophy.

Nezza Faz wrote:Can't imagine a supposed 'businessman' with this undermining philosophy.

Reading up about the billion pound soccer deal Premiership soccer has struck the commentators reckon their business people played a blinder.

It's not just that soccer is the worlds number 1 sport. They reckon their got Sky to over-bid due to fear of Al Jazera (believe it or not) nicking the crown jewels of Sky's sporting package.

They don't tell the other bidders who are bidding so that leaves them assuming who the competition is. Even if Sky were certain AL J were bidding they had no idea how much was on the table from them because it's a blind auction.

Richard Scudamore who runs all this for the Premiership managed to play the bidders off against each other.

Add to that his opinion that the renewal of the deal came just at the right time following the epic title race last season you end up with record receipts for the sport from TV. (Contrast that to the general feeling of how the playoffs work in RL)

So much for times of economic austerity meaning money will be tight.

It's blindingly obvious we do not have competition for our sports rights given the Stobart deal. This is an abject failure of the leadership to market it properly.

With the viewing figures we have on Sky I see no reason why any half decent marking dept could not be hoicking the sport to the likes of BT V for £38M a season.

Alas we have Nigel Wood running the show and he is far more concerned with the "small" things like the format of the playoffs or Millenium Magic.

Mo Lindsay was streets ahead of the current lot in charge when it came to big things like TV deals and sponsorship.

In fact I think he was way ahead of his time and put too many noses out of joint with his more radical ideas for the structure of the league (mergers etc) whereas the current lot are rank amateurs who seem to think maintaining the status quo is their job. Well if they do they need to wake up and realise that isn't possible.

DaveO wrote:

Nezza Faz wrote:Can't imagine a supposed 'businessman' with this undermining philosophy.

Reading up about the billion pound soccer deal Premiership soccer has struck the commentators reckon their business people played a blinder.

It's not just that soccer is the worlds number 1 sport. They reckon their got Sky to over-bid due to fear of Al Jazera (believe it or not) nicking the crown jewels of Sky's sporting package.

They don't tell the other bidders who are bidding so that leaves them assuming who the competition is. Even if Sky were certain AL J were bidding they had no idea how much was on the table from them because it's a blind auction.

Richard Scudamore who runs all this for the Premiership managed to play the bidders off against each other.

Add to that his opinion that the renewal of the deal came just at the right time following the epic title race last season you end up with record receipts for the sport from TV. (Contrast that to the general feeling of how the playoffs work in RL)

So much for times of economic austerity meaning money will be tight.

It's blindingly obvious we do not have competition for our sports rights given the Stobart deal. This is an abject failure of the leadership to market it properly.

With the viewing figures we have on Sky I see no reason why any half decent marking dept could not be hoicking the sport to the likes of BT V for £38M a season.

Alas we have Nigel Wood running the show and he is far more concerned with the "small" things like the format of the playoffs or Millenium Magic.

Mo Lindsay was streets ahead of the current lot in charge when it came to big things like TV deals and sponsorship.

In fact I think he was way ahead of his time and put too many noses out of joint with his more radical ideas for the structure of the league (mergers etc) whereas the current lot are rank amateurs who seem to think maintaining the status quo is their job. Well if they do they need to wake up and realise that isn't possible.

Well said, could not agree more.

slimshady wrote:

DaveO wrote:

Nezza Faz wrote:Can't imagine a supposed 'businessman' with this undermining philosophy.

Reading up about the billion pound soccer deal Premiership soccer has struck the commentators reckon their business people played a blinder.

It's not just that soccer is the worlds number 1 sport. They reckon their got Sky to over-bid due to fear of Al Jazera (believe it or not) nicking the crown jewels of Sky's sporting package.

They don't tell the other bidders who are bidding so that leaves them assuming who the competition is. Even if Sky were certain AL J were bidding they had no idea how much was on the table from them because it's a blind auction.

Richard Scudamore who runs all this for the Premiership managed to play the bidders off against each other.

Add to that his opinion that the renewal of the deal came just at the right time following the epic title race last season you end up with record receipts for the sport from TV. (Contrast that to the general feeling of how the playoffs work in RL)

So much for times of economic austerity meaning money will be tight.

It's blindingly obvious we do not have competition for our sports rights given the Stobart deal. This is an abject failure of the leadership to market it properly.

With the viewing figures we have on Sky I see no reason why any half decent marking dept could not be hoicking the sport to the likes of BT V for £38M a season.

Alas we have Nigel Wood running the show and he is far more concerned with the "small" things like the format of the playoffs or Millenium Magic.

Mo Lindsay was streets ahead of the current lot in charge when it came to big things like TV deals and sponsorship.

In fact I think he was way ahead of his time and put too many noses out of joint with his more radical ideas for the structure of the league (mergers etc) whereas the current lot are rank amateurs who seem to think maintaining the status quo is their job. Well if they do they need to wake up and realise that isn't possible.

Well said, could not agree more.

:eusa2: Best post you have made and maybe one of the best here for years IMO

People should check out how much money the RFU is planning to invest at grassroots from another cash cow, the RFU World Cup.

TWO EYED WARRIOR wrote:Mo's big idea was to merge teams.

Eg Cas/wakey, Mo's thinking that the merged entities would be stronger financially, with a bigger fan base and potentially better facilities.

Do you think this is now the way to go ?

Or is the sport suffering from pig headed traditionalism ?

I think it is tradition that means we have teams in a stones throw of each other (in West Yorkshire more than here) that means I can't for the life of me see when the likes of Bradford, Hudds, Cas and Wakefield are ever going to be able to be big enough to push the financial standard of the game up off the back of their own efforts. They are competing in the same market and its not that big anyway.

So while Mo's idea would theoretically have meant one SL team for the area by merging some of them I think the only way one SL team for the area will happen is if some of them drop out of SL or they go bust! I can't see mergers ever happening.

So if we want to keep traditional clubs we have to get more cash into them another way. A £38M a-season TV deal would do that. Whether such a regional based sport as ours can demand that compared to RU despite better viewing figures for RL I don't know. I am pretty sure though that those in charge are incapable of even attempting to get such a deal whereas Mo would have died trying.

TWO EYED WARRIOR wrote:Mo's big idea was to merge teams.

Eg Cas/wakey, Mo's thinking that the merged entities would be stronger financially, with a bigger fan base and potentially better facilities.

Do you think this is now the way to go ?

Or is the sport suffering from pig headed traditionalism ?

Look they would not even ground share let alone merge, fans will not support the idea of teams being merged. The only way is to help certain teams survive and others close by to slowly whither, this will seam very harsh but in the long run will perhaps see a much smaller super league but a more competetive one.

As long as clubs decline to merge in line with the new local authority area's and the present number here in the North of England remains the same, the game will continue to struggle, especially now that RU is professional. As Rugby League is a community based game and works in conjunction with local authorities, what is the point of having two and in some cases three club's in the same local authority area. Time that some supporters accepted that times have changed and less people are watching the game than what they did year's ago.

I don't want to merge with Leigh ! don't think they want to merge with us.Same difference Cas Wakey Batley Featherstone,Dewsbury Leeds.