Channel 4’s universally acclaimed Super League coverage
could open up rugby league to a whole new audience.
The reaction to Channel 4’s Super League coverage was –
pleasingly given rugby league’s tendency to find the negatives – almost
universally positive.
The opening segment presented by Adam Hills truly captured
the ethos of rugby league, and Hills continued to do an excellent job
throughout the broadcast. Summarisers Danika Priim, Leon Pryce and Sam Tomkins,
along with commentators Mark Wilson and Kyle Amor, all spoke intelligently and
accessibly about the game.
The coverage overall seemed far fresher than that served up
by Sky Sports, and thoroughly justified the sense of anticipation felt ever
since the link with Channel 4 was first announced.
* * *
On Saturday, if you had the means and the inclination, you
could have watched rugby league non-stop from the 6am kick-off of the NRL All
Stars Indigenous v Maori fixtures until full time in Toulouse’s disappointing
Super League debut v Huddersfield Giants at around 9pm.
I didn’t see everything on offer, though I did follow up the
Leeds-Warrington game with the mud-splattered Challenge Cup clash between Lock
Lane and Rochdale Hornets broadcast by The Sportsman – a proper old-school
battle where you could almost smell the liniment through your screen.
The amount of televised rugby league seems to have increased
dramatically since the early 2000s, thanks to Channel 4, The Sportsman, Premier
Sports, Our League and an expansion of the BBC’s streaming services to include
the earlier rounds of the Challenge Cup. All of this is positive, especially
where the fixtures are available for free.
* * *
Having Super League on free-to-air TV is a blessing for
those rugby league fans without regular access to Sky, though in strategic
terms the real benefit is the potential to reach a new audience.
Anecdotally, new viewers seem more inclined to try an
unfamiliar sport when it’s broadcast on the channels we used to refer to as
terrestrial. If you subscribe to Sky Sports for Premier League football, then
Premier League football you will watch. But rugby union, cricket, tennis, and
other sports gain a new following when they’re on the BBC, ITV or Channel 4.
There is certainly promise for rugby league, with Channel 4
head of sport Pete Andrews commenting, “We had a lot of messages on the
audience log from people who said they had never watched rugby league before
but they really enjoyed our coverage and would be watching it again.”
The only disappointment is that Channel 4 are only showing
ten games, including two play-off fixtures, all season. It’s easy to imagine many
who enjoyed Saturday’s game tuning into Hull v St Helens at the weekend, only
to lose interest in the month-long gap between then and the next fixture.
But this isn’t a time for even hypothetical negatives. With
Super League on Channel 4, interspersed with the BBC’s Challenge Cup coverage,
the door is wide open for rugby league to gain a new audience just in time for this
autumn’s World Cup.
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