Channel 4’s incredible viewing figures revealed as Castleford Tigers lost out to Wigan Warriors

[josie andrews]

Castleford Tigers took on Wigan Warriors at the Jungle on Saturday afternoon live on Channel 4.

It was the first time that Castleford had been on the terrestrial program as the West Yorkshire club went down 32-12 in what was a surprising result given Wigan’s Challenge Cup Final exploits from the week before.

With Helen Skelton hosting, Luke Gale, Kevin Brown and Kyle Amor were alongside her and it was a mix of personalities that just works.

Gale is articulate, Brown is experienced and Amor is passionate whilst Skelton is able to balance the trio well with a number of intriguing questions and quirky quips – it really has been a breath of fresh air for Super League in 2022.

And, with Castleford’s debut on Channel 4, the increase in viewers rose sharply despite the fact that it was a Bank Holiday weekend in celebration of the Queen’s 70th year on the throne.

There was a peak of 390,000 with a match average of 302,000 which equated to 5.4% of the TV share at the time and a broadcast average of 268,000 or 4.8%.

This represents a huge increase from when Hull KR hosted Catalans Dragons back in the Saturday lunchtime slot three weeks ago.

For the KR clash, there was a programme average viewing of 207,000 – 4.3% of the TV share – whilst the match itself took an average of 254,000 – 5.2% of the TV share – with a minute peak at 314,000.

The trend seems to be that the coverage works the best on a Saturday afternoon.

https://www.seriousaboutrl.com/channel- ... ors-54105/

[fozzieskem]

Skelton is very good,far better than Adam Hills who I find grating give her the gig full time I say

[benjamaphone]

Agreed - the style and attitude that both C4 and the BBC bring to their RL coverage is fresh and entertaining, far removed from the dour and often all-to-serious coverage on Sky. It's meant to be entertainment, I feel far more confident in C4 attracting new viewers over Sky.

[Richymac]

I don’t want this to come across as “I told you so” because I hate when people do that… but I do remember posting a long time ago about putting a game a week on terrestrial tv. Split between C4/BBC maybe. I still believe in that. And a match every 3 weeks give or take is working so far.

The coverage on C4 is brilliant and exciting. BBC also (apart from Davies). this seems to prove my point to a certain extent. I would love to see more regular coverage and a highlights show on a Sunday evening going forward.

Doubt Sky would be too happy (I’m not massively clued up on the contract RFL has with them), but a competitive market place is supposed to help business grow. So go for it, I say.

[the pieman]

I don’t want this to come across as “I told you so” because I hate when people do that… but I do remember posting a long time ago about putting a game a week on terrestrial tv. Split between C4/BBC maybe. I still believe in that. And a match every 3 weeks give or take is working so far.

The coverage on C4 is brilliant and exciting. BBC also (apart from Davies). this seems to prove my point to a certain extent. I would love to see more regular coverage and a highlights show on a Sunday evening going forward.

Doubt Sky would be too happy (I’m not massively clued up on the contract RFL has with them), but a competitive market place is supposed to help business grow. So go for it, I say.

There is a massive positive to take from the C4 coverage, and also the BBC coverage of the challenge cup, and that is that the RFL must be in a good position to bargain for a better TV deal next time round. If SKY insist on reducing the money, then we reduce the number of games and get more on free to air TV. C4 have commented that they are happy with the viewing figures (think it was an article after the 1st couple of games) and BBC must have been happy with the CC final figures, so there is definitely a free to air TV audience.
I guess the challenge is getting the balance right between the paymasters (SKY) and what we can get onto free to air, without coming out of it worse off financially

i have previously posted on here / RL Fans something very similar as RU is on BBC / ITV / C4 / C5 / ITV3 / BT and SKY, so they have managed to get deals with all of those, even though SKY was their main paymaster originally. I would be more than happy with BBC and C4 both being able to show superleague / championship games on a regular basis

[ian.birchall]

Skelton is very good,far better than Adam Hills who I find grating give her the gig full time I say

Heaven forbid I would say.

[morley pie eater]

Nothing to do with RL in particular, but I love it that we can see someone relatively trendy or glamorous (Helen Skelton) in a serious role on mainstream TV who has a Northern accent.

Steph McGovern from Middlesboro was a BBC economics reporter, but she moved to a trivial celeb-based C4 programme, presumably for more money.

[Mike]

Huge increase of +0.5%. Not to be negative, but this sounds like a clickbait headline and the percentage increase is basically insignificant. More people were watching TV during the Wigan game, so numbers went up, but the proportion of viewers didn't really.

[moto748]

I think the C4 coverage is fine, and I'm happy with Skelton and/or Hills. And I also agree that Davies is the weak link on the BBC. But it goes without saying that both are vastly better than the tired and lazy Sky coverage. And the point about the TV rights is an important one.

[morley pie eater]

Huge increase of +0.5%. Not to be negative, but this sounds like a clickbait headline and the percentage increase is basically insignificant. More people were watching TV during the Wigan game, so numbers went up, but the proportion of viewers didn't really.

I just read this again, Mike, and your comment is misleading.

If I owned 1% of shares in your company, and then increased my holding to 1.5%, that could be described as a 0.5% increase. But my holding would have increased by 50% !!!

So when comparing changes in a percentage, it's misleading to describe the actual increase as a percentage increase, as with the 0.5% above and in your comment.

The actual peak viewing figures seem to have gone from 314,000 to 390,000 comparing the two games. This is a 24.2% increase.
Match average from 207,000 to 268,000, which is plus 18.9%.

For audience share, competing with a Royal Jubilee, the average viewing figure went from 4.3% of total TV audience, to 4.8%. This is a percentage increase of 11.6%.

The 0.5% you referred to is 0.5% of everybody watching television at that time, which equates to an extra 67,000 viewers.

[To check my figures, think that a 10% increase on 4.3 would be a tenth extra, or +0.43, giving 4.73%. So 4.8% represents more than a 10% increase.]

This is good news from RL's pov, even if the figures hold steady, as it could mean a paid contract from Ch 4 from next season. Since the figures will likely be from a Channel 4 press release, it also indicates that they are happy with the numbers.