"Telecommunications watchdog Ofcom has told Sky it must slash the price it charges rival firms including cable, terrestrial and internet broadcasters to show its premium sports channels"

This is great news for me. As a subscriber to TopupTV, I called them and asked what the chances were of them showing Live Super League, or Sky Sports in general. They say that they will probably going to be showing live SKY SPORTS games by the summer !!.. They are just putting the price packages together, and will probably be only an additional £5 per month or so, if you have other packages... so that makes my TV, Films & Sports only £19.99 per month, much cheaper than Sky.

I may be wrong but I think this is being discussed in a thread talking about how it may undermine the financial structure of the whole sport along with other sports who rely on Sky money.

on the VT [urlhttp://viewtopic.php?f=2&t=451038&p=15061033&hilit=ofcom#p15061033[/url

the ruling only applies to sky sports 1 and 2 so even if this does happen (i don't think it will) you still wont get most of the rugby. eg magic weekend is on sky sports 4

Yeah, but a majority of the Super League games are on Sky Sports 1 or 2... so personally, it would still suit me tbh.

It is for now, but they can soon switch the top games to Sports 3 and 4.

Good news from that point of view but could see the end of the modern game as we know it when it comes to renegotiating the deal between the RL and Sky.

Just a thought but:
I cannot help wondering if a RL TV channel would be a winner.

50,000 subs @ £15.00 mth x 12 mths = £9,000,000 per an + Sponsors and Adds

Not a bad idea that.

Now have a think about the costs of the equipment, staff etc. for said channel, £9m wont cover it, nowhere near. (not with reasonable profit and payments to clubs)

Well I don't know how much equipment would cost, but with the right investment up front, they could have video equipment at all grounds (and a video ref). All matches are videod anyway. You could have many live and a few not live games.

There could be many more then 50,000 and they could perhaps get away with charging a bit more then £15.00 mth. I don't think a transponder cost that much

so you have all that kit sat doing nothing the rest of the week?

even the BBC/Sky don't actually have their own kit for everything, they hire people in, I doubt there is enough spare capacity to cover RL as well, look at the extra channels on satellite/free view, they dont have live content, they have one or two people in front of a single camera, usually playing a lot of repeated content, the advertising is peanuts too.

The danger is that the clubs would suffer through the turnstiles. Currently we charge ca £20 a match - whereas you could sit at home and watch all your teams matches for £15/month - I could see a huge drop in season passes and people just picking and choosing their games and consequently the death of Rugby League.