Sky sold the highlight's package to the BBC, the contract ends in 2020, I believe the contract allows the BBC to broadcast the Super League Shows regionally on the Monday night, and Nationally the following day,but they don't stipulate what time it has to be broadcast, the scheduling is for the BBC to decide.I think we can forget the BBC bidding big money for our sport. You look at the whole Bake Off debacle to see that even a show that is watched by 10-11m a week for 12 weeks of the year is beyond them when silly money gets bandied around. The other main issue of our sport moving from Sky to terrestrial is the simple fact that crowds for live games would go down. Look at Cup QF and SF crowds as an example of this.
I don't know what Sky's deal actually stipulates, but I've read certain things that stated that Sky sold the rights for the highlights package to the BBC. If the Super League Show exists only because Sky sold the highlights rights to the BBC then that may be the reason why it is on at such a daft time because Sky may have stipulated that it couldn't be shown earlier. This for me is the key to the TV rights. I don't honestly think BT are bothered because they have club RU on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. It is a good deal for them as it allows them to tap into a different audience and I don't see them wanting to upset the RFU by having RL on as well on the same evenings and afternoons.
As I say, the free TV highlights are the key thing that the RFL can sort out. The RU Prem has a highlights show at peak time on Sundays on ITV4, repeated later on ITV. It gets good ratings and is on the air whilst the weekends games are still fresh in the memory. Football has MOTD, watched by 3-4m people and on at a time when the games are fresh and relevant. There hasn't been a live PL game on free TV for way over 20 years, but the PL is huge, because more people still watch MOTD than any live game on Sky. Even the Football League has a 90 minute highlights show at 9pm on C5 on a Saturday night just hours after the games have finished.
So, what is stopping the RFL from trying to get a highlights package on the BBC really close to the Friday night games? It might be logistically difficult to get such a show on at say 11pm that same night, but it would definitely be easy enough to get it on BBC2 on Saturday at midday for example. Most of the big games of the round are done and dusted by Friday night, so have a highlights show that reflects this and actually shows highlights whilst the big games are still relevant. They could wrap up any other games on Sat and Sun with a red button show or a highlights show on the BBC RL webpage, so as not to have two studio shows every weekend. It would make so much more sense. Instead, we have the SLS at 11pm or whenever on Monday night, some 4 days after the first game of the round happened and 3 days after the bulk of the round was played. SLS is scheduled closer to the start of the following round than the start of the round it is supposed to cover, which is ridiculous. Imagine MOTD going out on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening covering games that happened the previous Saturday, because that is the equivalent.
If we sort out a proper highlights show at a proper time (Sat 12pm for example) then Sky could continue to do what they wanted with live games. They would be were we go to watch live games on Thu or Fri, and would be an important financial supporter of the game. But if we are at a game on a Friday night, or if we don't have Sky we would know there is an hour long highlights show at midday on BBC2 with all the action, and it would get good ratings and be a massive benefit to the sport. That is the key thing for me, because at present we basically have Sky dominating the landscape with a highlights show that lacks any relevance because by the time it comes on we are already looking ahead to the next round of games.