ourla wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 2:25 pm
Tiglon wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 1:07 pmWhat you would call negativity is what I would call realism.
I just feel you get in a negative mental spiral with this stuff. Anyhow, a rabbit hole which we should probably stop going down.
Tiglon wrote: ↑There are plenty of unalterable reasons why Prem rugby is not as commercially successful as the French pro leagues or NFL. Yes we need to look at some of the reasons for their success and try to emulate them where it is possible to, but we also need to learn from the many reasons for their success that are simply not possible for us to emulate no matter how hard we try.
Let's forget NFL for a moment. We've discussed the French rugby before but I don't remember "unalterable reasons why Prem rugby is not as commercially successful". Can you expand? I believe BT Sport paid £110m for 3 years from 2021 and Canal+ 454 Euros (£390m) for 4 years from 2023. On a per club basis Pro14 teams can claim to bring in £7m per year to that deal. The older Prem deal was something like £3m per club per year. Why the disparity - are the viewing figures for Canal+ much higher than BT/TNT? Is it purely down to Prem football. I don't think so.
Tiglon wrote: ↑How long has English rugby banged on about growing the game? 2, 3 decades? Have we got anywhere? No - our ambition has led to 3 clubs going bust and, as a result, fewer people going to watch live rugby than before. Let's be realistic with what we can achieve and focus on consolidation and safeguarding the existence of the professional clubs that we have, and be content with our status as a niche sport in this country. That, for me, would be wonderful progress and a great cause for positivity.
I don't disagree with the first part. Growing the game means f all without substance, some meat on the bones. And yes mistakes have been made, as I say. I don't see it as niche. Golf is less followed than rugby, is that niche? Hockey, to me is niche, my sport volleyball is definitely niche in the UK (even though it's big globally). Again, saying it's niche for me is overly negative. B
ugger, back down that rabbit hole
Someone posted a great article about the relationship between Canal +. They basically gave up on football and targeted rugby as their flagship sport and so provided good funding and promotion to the game. There are also games at prime times Thursday=Sunday I believe and so they have plenty to show. That is where the good deals come from.
As for the sport being Niche, at club level it is, OK not a niche as hockey or volleyball. Golf is an interesting one and that has a similar issue to rugby in that there is a great deal of interest in the big events but very little in everything else in Europe.It does, however, have global audience and I suspect it sells subscriptions more than club rugby simply for the Majors. Now if we sold the international rights with the club rights, there may be a bigger deal for everyone.
The problem we have as a winter sport is football, and yes I do think that much is down to football in general. The channels do not need any other sports to fill the channels, they have it all covered with football. Not having football means subscriber numbers plummeting and the French do not appear to have that issue (in fact, aside from PSG, they suffer from the lack of funding to compete in Europe that our rugby clubs do). Whilst it may have been feasible in France to drop football and promote rugby, that just would not work here.
The TV deal is only worth what the channels will pay. We tried to walk away from the last deal and had to go back almost cap in hand because nobody else wanted the rights. Everything could change if other companies came in for rights but Sky seem uninterested, terrestrial TV do not have the cash or perhaps the inclination for anything more than a combined deal with TNT and so you possibly have Amazon who have lost their football rights but there are no current rumours.