Fox obviously prefer AFL

[Everlovin' Antichrist]

He is the short ugly one.

Sniffing around any nearby grannies...

 

[Moffo]

ah thats life...self interest and agendas will always run big corporations. time to get used to it

 

[LeagueXIII]

In regard to content, then let's discuss a League channel as opposed to just a NRL or AFL channel..

AFL Channel:

AFL comp........... :roll:

League Channel:

NRL
ESL
French Comp (Matchs of the rnd and LDC and Elite GFs)
SOO classics
Challenge Cup Finals and GF
Test matches & Test classics (Four Nations the commercials don't want)
WC matches and WC classics (WC matches the commercials don't want)
Pacific Cup matches (as shown on Nine 3 years ago)
NSW Cup
QLD Cup
PNG Comp
Some European Cup matches such as French games..
City Country past matches

You could also add the Championship and Champ 1 league games and Northern Rail Cup games which are being shown on Uk channel Premier Sports also the talk shows from the UK and NZ such as Boots n all and the SL show from the BBC.

Challenge Cup is shown on BBC (2 games) from Round 3.

This year the top teams from the French Elite and the UK Championship will be playing in a tournament, so again another comp of interest.

Also I know in NZ, Maori TV shows the Auckland club games each week.

Plus the IRLF could put together a magazine style program showing league around the world, interviews etc.

Could have a where are they now type program.

Heaps of content.

 

[Lambretta]

I would have trouble picking him in a police line up..

Spot the real Wayne Rooney

Oh and for the record Wayne Rooney is a big lover of Rugby League and has been spotted at St Helens games among others.

 

[Lambretta]

Hey guys, lets get some perspective here.

Foxtel is a business - it will do whatever it thinks is in its own interests to increase its ratings. Foxtel doesnt really care if NRL or AFL or tiddlywinks rates the highest. Whatever it can sell, it will sell.

At the moment Rugby League sells on TV and the reasons for that are varied. For example, the North Queensland Cowboys has a fanbase that covers a huge area geogrphically and their fans cannot get to games easily. As their games are almost exclusively shown on a Saturday night (at the request of the club) they get shown live on Fox. That means Cowboys fans will subscribe heavily to Foxtel.

Also, like it or not, Rugby League translates far better to television than AFL does. With AFL what happens off the ball is often as important to the spectator as what is occuring on the ball. The camera can't capture this and a large reason for watching is lost. With league the camera can focus on the ruck area really well and alot of what happens live is far easier to see on television than at the ground.

That means League fans are far more likely to WANT to watch the televised recording and more likely to subscribe to pay television if the product they want to see is shown there more frequently.

Foxtel has weak subscription levels across the Southern States and the fact that so much AFL shows on FTA (Seven, Ten, One HD etc) means that the people that do want to watch AFL dont have to subscribe. If Foxtel increases it's ownership of games they're hoping to increase Southern State revenues and gain a larger slice of the pie.

It doesn't mean that Foxtel suddenly doesnt like league or is going to reduce it's commitment to league. It just means they want to raise the number of subscribers in areas that arent currently buying. The real obstacle Foxtel faces is the fact that AFL is already widely shown on FTA - if this remains to be the case then Foxtel is hardly going to increase is subscription levels without buying a higher percentage of the AFL live coverage.

This is the real danger to Rugby League. If the AFL are successful in getting Foxtel to pay more in the future for its content then Fox may wish to cut back on its funding of League.

For the record, I'm not certain that an AFL dedicated channel will be a danger. They have had one before with a very similar format to the new one being proposed but it failed. With the game unsuited in many respects to television and so many games on FTA anyway I cant see them making it a success this time round.

 

[supercharger]

You are talking about a different world there. Hundreds of millions of people are going to watch Man United play this weekend and Wayne Rooney is one of the most recognisable people on earth.

hundreds of millions puh-lease :crazy:

 

[Phil McGrawhan]

Mate the last tv contract for AFL (2006) they paid far more for AFL than RL..
The excuse being Signing up subscriptions in southern states.
What happened..very few in the south signed up.
After 5 yrs the have paid big$$$$$ again in the hope that something that didnt eventuate before ,suddenly will.

The prob we have as RL fans is ,Williams the AFL lapdog has stated that he cannot see why RL should get an increase.

In business if you dont look after your existing customers as well as looking for new then your existing customers will piss off.
I wont hesitate to cancel if RL gets shated by Fox.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...tv-rip-off-claim/story-e6frexnr-1111116955780

FOXTEL chief executive Kim Williams has taken aim at suggestions the NRL was "ripped off" during negotiations for television rights.
Williams yesterday responded to an article by Fairfax journalist Roy Masters that claimed the NRL had seriously undersold its broadcaster rights to part-owner News Limited, publisher of The Daily Telegraph.
Masters claimed in The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday that Foxtel, Fox Sports and News Limited had underpaid the NRL for its television rights, but Williams said yesterday: "This is simply factually wrong.
"Roy Masters argued that because NRL games out-rate AFL, their TV rights are worth more.
"Wrong. The value of the rights is based on how many new subscribers will be attracted by the coverage.
"When rugby league first appeared on pay-TV, a huge sum was paid for the rights but there were no subscribers."

Williams said the market penetration of pay-TV in NSW and Queensland has been as much as 25 to 40 per cent higher than in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
"This is because our coverage of league began eight years before our coverage of the AFL, and even today we still have more games of NRL than AFL each week," he said.
"The value of the latest AFL rights reflects the growth potential for new subscribers in the southern states as well as the growth still available in NSW and Queensland, given the support for the Swans and Lions.
"The total national audience for AFL is bigger than it is for NRL. That's a fact.
"But for the time being there are more league fans that subscribe to Foxtel than AFL fans.
"Nevertheless, the value of the pay TV rights for AFL and NRL are roughly the same - the big difference in the total value is because free-to-air television pays a lot more for AFL than it pays for NRL."

 

[Lambretta]

hundreds of millions puh-lease :crazy:

From Wikipedia

Support

Manchester United is reputed to be the most popular football club in the world, with the highest average home attendance in Europe.[78] The club's worldwide fan base includes more than 200 officially recognised branches of the Manchester United Supporters Club (MUSC), in at least 24 countries.[79] The club takes advantage of this support through its worldwide summer tours. Accountancy firm and sports industry consultants Deloitte estimate that Manchester United has 75 million fans worldwide,[7] while other estimates put this figure closer to 333 million.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_United_F.C.#cite_note-barnes_52-82

If Manchester United has a game shown against a large rival or at the pointy end of an important competition, between the UK and Asia the television audience globally could easily bypass the 100 million barrier. Remember, those that want to see them fail often watch as well.

As the old adage says - there are three football teams with swearwords in their name, Arsenal, Sc.unthorpe and f**king Man Utd.

 

[supercharger]

I know that they are well supported guy but no way are they pulling hundreds of millions of viewers a game,this article is old i know but you get the idea http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/tvs-great-viewing-mirage-768839.html
The CL final is the most watched football game each year outside of the world cup and euros and it gets just a little over 100 million viewers.

 

[Perth Red]

"When rugby league first appeared on pay-TV, a huge sum was paid for the rights but there were no subscribers."

Williams said the market penetration of pay-TV in NSW and Queensland has been as much as 25 to 40 per cent higher than in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
"This is because our coverage of league began eight years before our coverage of the AFL, and even today we still have more games of NRL than AFL each week," he said.
"The value of the latest AFL rights reflects the growth potential for new subscribers in the southern states as well as the growth still available in NSW and Queensland, given the support for the Swans and Lions.

Which is fine, businesses invest to get more customers, no drama. What it fails to reflect is the existing viewership and I think this reflects the fact that Fox knows it has NRl by the balls and knows that there is no way NRL would not give Fox coverage regardless of amount of $'s offered. Unless Fox seriously believed they were at risk of losing NRL coverage then they will not offer the same as they do for AFL.

Our best hope is for two FTA to come in and try and wrestle the majority of games for FTA. If we had 2 Friday games, 2 Sunday games and a Monday game on FTA nationally then watch Fox subscriptions nosedive then they would need to offer overs to keep enough exclusive content to keep RL fans subscribing.

 

[docbrown]

Which is fine, businesses invest to get more customers, no drama. What it fails to reflect is the existing viewership and I think this reflects the fact that Fox knows it has NRl by the balls and knows that there is no way NRL would not give Fox coverage regardless of amount of $'s offered. Unless Fox seriously believed they were at risk of losing NRL coverage then they will not offer the same as they do for AFL.

Our best hope is for two FTA to come in and try and wrestle the majority of games for FTA. If we had 2 Friday games, 2 Sunday games and a Monday game on FTA nationally then watch Fox subscriptions nosedive then they would need to offer overs to keep enough exclusive content to keep RL fans subscribing.

Anywhere from 5 to 6 matches is enough to put a dint in their ego. Ask yourself - if you bought foxtel for NRL, would you keep it for 2-3 matches?

And if all the games were on FTA - and that's a big if - then they could be arranged into 4 to 5 time slots and doubled up to cater to multiple markets. You could have a Queensland team every Friday, Saturday & Sunday. Also 2-3 NSW teams on those days plus at least 1 on a Monday. Then you've got Melbourne and Perth to market to on as well.

Whilst you won't necessarily double revenue you could damn well come close. With competitive tension and other innovations you could look at a FTA package around the $900 million+ mark plus contra and other media.

 

[Billythekid]

Good point docbrown. Then you also have to factor in the growing amount of money Fox are making from advertising revenue. It's a bit disingenious to say the people already signed up offer no room to grow when your advertising revenue is constantly going up. That plus there has still been growth in the northern states despite all the BS about the southern states having all the growth left.

On top of it all is the fact that whilst fox supposedly has us by the balls the reverse is true as well. In NSW and QLD (by far their biggest markets in Australia) they are completely reliant on the NRL. If they lost the NRL they would be f*cked and would start haemorrhaging subscriptions overnight.

They can't lose the NRL and they know it (even if they don't say that publicly).

 

[Cletus]

Good point docbrown. Then you also have to factor in the growing amount of money Fox are making from advertising revenue. It's a bit disingenious to say the people already signed up offer no room to grow when your advertising revenue is constantly going up. That plus there has still been growth in the northern states despite all the BS about the southern states having all the growth left.

On top of it all is the fact that whilst fox supposedly has us by the balls the reverse is true as well. In NSW and QLD (by far their biggest markets in Australia) they are completely reliant on the NRL. If they lost the NRL they would be f*cked and would start haemorrhaging subscriptions overnight.

They can't lose the NRL and they know it (even if they don't say that publicly).

The trouble is there is no-one else but Foxtel. I hope one comes out of the woodwork but unless there is a serious alternative Fox are going to cry poor and shaft us again. And we don't have the balls to threaten to broadcast ourselves like the AFL have in the last two negotiations.

 

[docbrown]

Some people might have a whinge if the estimates are out of line with their expectations, but if it takes threatening Foxtel with ZERO coverage and actually following through, it would only take about 2 years for them to feel the impact.

If we can get more from blocking Foxtel out than what we can then just accepting their generous "handout" - plus if it hurts them in the process, then I'm all for walking away. There's money to be made from FTA and Internet sources if the vision is there to pursue it.

If their whole demeanour is to hold the NRL over a barrel then the NRL must be prepared to take it away from them so they're forced to start from scratch when negotiations resume in 3 to 5 years time.

They need to remind Foxtel what it will cost Foxtel to start again from nothing.

It is actually to the NRL's benefit to get more exposure from the wider scope of free to air than it is from the niche of subscription broadcasting. Imagine the landscape if AFL were purely the domain of pay TV and NRL on free to air. Which do you think would be discussed more?

I'm not saying that will necessarily happen. But if AFL drifts more towards subscription and the NRL drifts more towards open access exposure, then it will benefit the NRL in the long term.

 

[Special K]

On Epping road in north ryde there is a foxtel banner for the afl season. Last year around this time it was for the NRL...

 

[Phil McGrawhan]

Some people might have a whinge if the estimates are out of line with their expectations, but if it takes threatening Foxtel with ZERO coverage and actually following through, it would only take about 2 years for them to feel the impact.

If we can get more from blocking Foxtel out than what we can then just accepting their generous "handout" - plus if it hurts them in the process, then I'm all for walking away. There's money to be made from FTA and Internet sources if the vision is there to pursue it.

.

John Grants field.

 

[ParraEelsNRL]

Lets hope Al Jazera sports sets up camp in Australia, that'll put the cat amongst the pigeons.

 

[Titanic]

Coming in late but better late than never:

1. Scrap the NRL Channel concept but if we have to have it call it the Rugby League Channel. Also the World Sevens could make a come-back, add the All Stars, the schoolboys and even old AMCO Cup footage ... how about a Bring back the Biff Segment?

2. On a more serious side of things, there seems to be a lot of cheap shots at the hand that should feed us but what about the other hog in the trough Channel Nein? They have paid unders forever and were a part of the cataclysm that we are stuck with now. I am no News supporter but things have to be in perspective.

3. John Grant was a fair footballer and an even better businessman, however, he and his board do not have magical powers. We have patiently put up with generations of archaic management of our sport, it's time we gave this mob a fair run at it.

4. The danger from the AFL is not just about their sponsorship dollars, it's more about their political connections ... whereas they can roll out any number of serious players including the PM Gizzard, we roll out the Humphrey B Bear of politics aka Bob Katter Jnr. Even when Rudd was the Man, who put the squirrel grip on his historic ties to the game ... the Victorians that's who. We need movers and shakers not arrogant club-focused meat tray sellers.

 

[Billythekid]

On Epping road in north ryde there is a foxtel banner for the afl season. Last year around this time it was for the NRL...

Yep even around Newcastle the foxtel stands have AFL pictures instead of NRL pictures. Have you seen the ratings for the AFL out here? Newcastle is about as anti AFL as any town you can find and yet they still try and jam it down our throats.

It's truly amazing really. The influence AFL has in so many businesses is just mind blowing.

 

[Lambretta]

On Epping road in north ryde there is a foxtel banner for the afl season. Last year around this time it was for the NRL...

Is it just me or is the build up around the upcoming NRL season a little low key this season?

Maybe we're too far away because Australia is still in test cricket mode, but I would have thought I would have seen more NRL Membership drive advertising and more about the upcoming season in general on TV

All I have seen to be honest are ads about the channel being discussed here that no one in NSW will want to watch.