An interesting debate this week about certain sports, like rugby league, which are standing still in terms of profile and progression. Something – that old chestnut – needs to be done. One something suggested by some is to involve someone like Eddie Hearn to use his gifts to raise profiles. After all, just look at what he has done with darts! I’m not so sure.
I am a serious rugby league fan. It’s the main reason I subscribe to Sky Sports, along with the fact that it’s the only place you can watch Barcelona play every single week. I am the first to admit that, in general, league is confined to its northern heartlands and has barely penetrated the south of England. Personally, I think it will take a great deal more than Eddie Hearn to change that.
Rugby league used to be on the BBC pretty well every week. In my childhood, the sport was live in the BBC Grandstand show on Saturday afternoons. That’s how I grew to love it. Now, league is largely confined to Sky. Can you see a possible reason why the sport is not expanding?
For rugby league, add cricket. Our official summer sport is dying on its arse. Less people are playing cricket, small clubs are folding across the land. Hardly anyone who is not a major cricket fan talks about the game, the big stars are unknowns. And here’s the thing: there is almost no cricket on terrestrial TV. Sky has all the domestic cricket, BT has the odd series abroad. Your average punter is losing interest in cricket, which has retreated to its middle class, and indeed upper class, heartlands.
The decline in certain sports was surely inevitable once the authorities decided that income from satellite providers was more important than coverage reaching the great unwashed. They decided wrong. The extra money, or at least some of it, from the likes of Sky does reach the grassroots but here’s the key: it only permeates to the clubs who have money to start with. A few hundred quid to a small club fighting to survive is only just better than nothing.
Eddie Hearn isn’t needed for cricket because the powers that be are making the millions they need, even if participation numbers are collapsing and I am not sure he is needed in rugby league either because the success of the darts is more down to getting male stag parties as pissed as possible. I am not sure that would be a good move for rugby.
No. If rugby league is to be expanded and not just left as it is, the powers that be need to extend viewership and that will need to be on terrestrial telly. Sky do a great job with their coverage but they are merely keeping existing fans happy. If hardly anyone has access to a sport, it won’t grow: fact. But you just know that those who run RL merely want the money, just like the cricket authorities want theirs.
