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.
