Leigh Leopards owner Derek Beaumont has hit out at the current Sky Sports deal, arguing Super League sides should lay down a challenge to the broadcaster.
They were just some of the thoughts of the Leigh owner in a brilliant and impassioned speech detailing the finer workings between IMG, Super League, the RFL and broadcasters Sky Sports.
Beaumont would make his argument when appearing on the Super League Raw YouTube channel speaking all things rugby league but he would introduce his challenge to Sky Sports by first detailing how he initially interpreted what Rugby League Commercial were asking marketing giants IMG to do.
The deal between RL Commercial and IMG has been a source of controversy and Beaumont has since claimed it’s not what he was sold, but he has now explained his interpretation by using the analogy of his own business, AB Sundecks.
Beaumont stated: “I was led to believe that the situation would be like if a salesman (IMG) walked into my business (Super League) tomorrow and said, ‘I can sell you decks on caravan parks that you don’t currently deal in. I don’t want paying anything, but I want 15% of everything I sell for you.’
“I’d be an absolute fool to tell that guy to get out of the place unless I was working at 100% capacity and we know that Super League and the sport is nowhere near that. We don’t have the resources to have loads of marketing teams and all these specialists that a global conglomerate could bring to us.
“I believed that the onus was on them because I believed they were getting nothing, other than a fraction of the success. When I found out that what we had signed was a £5,000,000 deal with the sport paying a marketing budget, that we don’t have, of £450,000 a year for the next ten years, I was flattened and deflated.”
Derek Beaumont’s plan to improve the Super League broadcast deal
Credit: Imago Images
Continuing, the Leigh Leopards owner would explain how and why he felt Super League was being devalued by the current broadcast deal with Sky Sports and what he would propose to improve it.
“I look at it like this. From the centre, we get £1.25 million. From that, deductions are made for things that we all agree to like gum shield, brain health and various odds and sods. That is dwindling though, it was £1.8 million back in 2017 so I’m down to two-thirds of what I was.
“I’m being valued at allowing cameras and use of Leigh Leopards brand, which is very close and passionate to me, at £90,000 a game when you come in. If we then take those stats of around 250,00 people watching my club on Sky, who have the rights to every game, then you can do the maths but we’re talking pence per viewer.”
Effectively, the maths that the Leigh man describes are the result of dividing £1.25 million by 13, on account of the 13 home games per season in Super League, for a figure of just over £96,000. With Sky Sports broadcasting every single Super League game, it means that they are ‘buying’ the right to show it for that figure, something that Beaumont was not happy about.
“I would rather, and I say this with no fear of being called out, tell them to keep their money and I’ll dictate my brand and who comes in and who films,” he argued.
“You can film me when we go to other clubs, that’s their right but you don’t come in here for that value. We want much more and I believe I can market my club for much more.”
On how he would do that, he pointed to the new streaming platform of Super League+, advocating that it should move from more than just a platform that shows the games to once that is further monetised with the use of adverts instead of just relaying the Sky Sports stream.
“I believe that we can stream our own games and reach far wider audiences and that is what Super League+ is designed to do. That’s what we need to monetise and what we need to get adverts on, get all the clubs’ games streaming through it and then we can let Sky have a slice of our product, but at the right price.
“They think at the moment there is no competition to them, I’m competition to them. It’s my own brand and collectively we need to get clubs (together).
“Mike Danson has far more wealth in his little finger than I’ve got in my own body. He’s a billionaire, he doesn’t need £1.25 million. Simon Moran, Eamon McManus, Mark McNulty, you can go further. If enough of us speak up and are prepared to give RL Commercial the power that we’re not going to be shoved about to sign a deal that devalues our product and can only get a viewership of 250,000.
“As a sport, we need to become competition to the broadcast audience that’s out there. That’s what IMG should be trying to build and empower us to do through all their endeavour partners and global streaming.”
With the Sky Sports deal running all the way through until the end of the 2026 season, it’s unclear how any challenge from the clubs would work.
Gary Pennington
October 20, 2024 at 7:17 pm
Rugby league is slowly going down the pan it needs to be tweeked so I say go for it derek and other directors.
John Byrne
October 20, 2024 at 7:45 pm
I think sky plus has made rugby league coverage worse you can’t seem to get as much coverage as before no chat on the game before kickoff or halftime seems like they can’t get the cameras away quick enough, have complained to sky about this think fans are being taken advantage of.
Stan
October 21, 2024 at 1:22 pm
He is absolutely right sell the product not be thankful that we’ve sold it
David Hughes
October 21, 2024 at 5:01 pm
The act of doing player/coach interviews by the studio commentators speaking to a bloke stood alone with a set of headphones on looks bad. Sky plus does too much buffering & the public are being ripped off in the tv quality stakes. You don’t even know if your club’s game will actually “broadcast” so dire is the service.