130% rise in average TV audiences for Aviva Premiership games

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Great news for the league and the game in England.
 
http://www.premiershiprugby.com/news/28895.php#.UjsAxn_AHFo
 
Well done BT, just goes to show what can be achieved if you are willing to accept change.

[quote="Scrumpy"]

thebandwagonsociety wrote:

nathan wrote:does make me laugh reading some of the hatred from our celtic friends regarding BT.  

It's not all hatred directed your way.  It's great to see the viewership figures are up.  But I'm surprised that rugby only pull 180,000 viewers?  I would have thought it would be a much higher percentage of the overall english or indeed UK population.

But that’s it compared to Football rugby isn't really a major sport in England and we don't have a huge player pool to pick from.

Some of you are so misguided on the English.
[/quote
You have over 2.5 million registered players in England, there are 78 thousand in Wales, and you don't have a HUGE player pool.
Part of the reason I'm against the so called number of people in England that totally outnumbers the number of people from Wales, Ireland etc that watch HC matches, on the day Wales played England in the pre 2011 WC warm up match at Twickenham, I was staying at a campsite about 10 miles outside Worcester, going into the city hoping to watch the game on the Saturday afternoon, I visited between 15 and 20 Pubs, NOT ONE was showing the game, they were practically all showing Horse Racing even though there were plenty of betting shops available, if you went into any comparable sized Welsh town, practically EVERY PUB would be showing the game and they would be full

I went into a pub to watch the Newcastle vs Bath game at the start of the season, it was advertised outside the pub that it was on but the England football friendly was on instead, when I asked the bar staff they said tough as one man and his dog got there 1st and wanted to watch over paid, over hyped players smash part timers.

Luckly I hadn't paid for my pint so I walked out.

Scrumpy wrote:I went into a pub to watch the Newcastle vs Bath game at the start of the season,  it was advertised outside the pub that it was on but the England football friendly was on instead, when I asked the bar staff they said tough as one man and his dog got there 1st and wanted to watch over paid, over hyped players smash part timers.
Luckly I hadn't paid for my pint so I walked out.

Wasn't that more or less the same as Bath V Newcastle  

The figures are certainly a huge improvement on the ESPN games last year, whether they can overhaul Sky as well remains to be seen, though remember BT sport subscriber levels are still way below Sky sports and are likely to grow quickly, so hopefully Aviva figures will nudge up throughout the season.

Also of note is that a Top 14 game got 44,000 viewers, may not sound a lot but that is pretty impressive for a foreign league of any sport on a fledging channel. What this indicates is that Rugby fans have made a point of signing up.

The reason I ask is didn't something similar come along a while back in Setanta and all that was supposed to be the next big thing but within a couple of years they went up in smoke and football coverage returned to Sky.

There is no comparison, BT is a multi £Billion FTSE company not a plucky little upstart. The sports channel fits very nicely into their existing core business.

I think BT will be very pleased with the figures so far for the rugby. To be credible as a sports channel they need to have something to offer apart from the soccer PL, and the Aviva is clearly so far their no.2 performing product. Short of them landing a major cricket deal and other rugby deals I can't think for a moment why they would be keen to let the Aviva rights go, and if this happened Sky would probably be back in the game anyway.

ScarletSpiderman wrote:

Scrumpy wrote:I went into a pub to watch the Newcastle vs Bath game at the start of the season,  it was advertised outside the pub that it was on but the England football friendly was on instead, when I asked the bar staff they said tough as one man and his dog got there 1st and wanted to watch over paid, over hyped players smash part timers.
Luckly I hadn't paid for my pint so I walked out.

Wasn't that more or less the same as Bath V Newcastle  

That will apply to next weeks game too!  

Scrumpy wrote:

ScarletSpiderman wrote:

Scrumpy wrote:I went into a pub to watch the Newcastle vs Bath game at the start of the season,  it was advertised outside the pub that it was on but the England football friendly was on instead, when I asked the bar staff they said tough as one man and his dog got there 1st and wanted to watch over paid, over hyped players smash part timers.
Luckly I hadn't paid for my pint so I walked out.

Wasn't that more or less the same as Bath V Newcastle  

That will apply to next weeks game too!  

So you went in to one pub to watch a club game of Rugby and they were showing the Nations Premier Sport, and an International game at that, and I went into 15 to 20 pubs to watch a home international and not one was showing the game in a city whose team IIRC were in the top tier of English Rugby.

Rascar wrote:The figures are certainly a huge improvement on the ESPN games last year, whether they can overhaul Sky as well remains to be seen, though remember BT sport subscriber levels are still way below Sky sports and are likely to grow quickly, so hopefully Aviva figures will nudge up throughout the season.

Also of note is that a Top 14 game got 44,000 viewers, may not sound a lot but that is pretty impressive for a foreign league of any sport on a fledging channel. What this indicates is that Rugby fans have made a point of signing up.

The reason I ask is didn't something similar come along a while back in Setanta and all that was supposed to be the next big thing but within a couple of years they went up in smoke and football coverage returned to Sky.

There is no comparison, BT is a multi £Billion FTSE company not a plucky little upstart. The sports channel fits very nicely into their existing core business.

I think BT will be very pleased with the figures so far for the rugby. To be credible as a sports channel they need to have something to offer apart from the soccer PL, and the Aviva is clearly so far their no.2 performing product. Short of them landing a major cricket deal and other rugby deals I can't think for a moment why they would be keen to let the Aviva rights go, and if this happened Sky would probably be back in the game anyway.

Or the subscriptions were already there, as BT has been the most popular net provider around for years (I and most people I know signed up for BT net and Sky TV years ago).

The trues acid test will be when BT decide to make the channell a pay for entity and go head to head with sky, opposed to the bonus freebie it currently is to customers.

Fro what I've heard new net subscriptions havn't highlighted a rise to coincide with the channell, and until it does the channell is tester only. As someone said, it's probably a decent start but long way to go.

butterfingers wrote:

Rascar wrote:The figures are certainly a huge improvement on the ESPN games last year, whether they can overhaul Sky as well remains to be seen, though remember BT sport subscriber levels are still way below Sky sports and are likely to grow quickly, so hopefully Aviva figures will nudge up throughout the season.

Also of note is that a Top 14 game got 44,000 viewers, may not sound a lot but that is pretty impressive for a foreign league of any sport on a fledging channel. What this indicates is that Rugby fans have made a point of signing up.

The reason I ask is didn't something similar come along a while back in Setanta and all that was supposed to be the next big thing but within a couple of years they went up in smoke and football coverage returned to Sky.

There is no comparison, BT is a multi £Billion FTSE company not a plucky little upstart. The sports channel fits very nicely into their existing core business.

I think BT will be very pleased with the figures so far for the rugby. To be credible as a sports channel they need to have something to offer apart from the soccer PL, and the Aviva is clearly so far their no.2 performing product. Short of them landing a major cricket deal and other rugby deals I can't think for a moment why they would be keen to let the Aviva rights go, and if this happened Sky would probably be back in the game anyway.

Or the subscriptions were already there, as BT has been the most popular net provider around for years (I and most people I know signed up for BT net and Sky TV years ago).

The trues acid test will be when BT decide to make the channell a pay for entity and go head to head with sky, opposed to the bonus freebie it currently is to customers.

Fro what I've heard new net subscriptions havn't highlighted a rise to coincide with the channell, and until it does the channell is tester only. As someone said, it's probably a decent start but long way to go.

I think BT will be continue to build out there vision product, it's just lacking content at the moment (in part to Sky deniing them access to it, as you would) and not all exchanges are enabled for it (multicast). I think the days of them being just a phone/broadband company are long gone. With Sky and Talk Talk doing the multi deals at least it's pushed the price down a little. Still think Sky charges too much mind you.

Sky do charge too much, and I welcome BT into the market to make things more competitive.

That said BT are very fledgling, and I don't know anyone considering swapping their Sky package for any BT package, even as a free entity as is.

Until BT prove actual competition for Sky I remain sceptical, especially if it gets to a point where all my sporting usual watches are split between 2 different providers, I have been unaffected so far, but it's only a matter of time.

I was ready for a new Broadband / phone supplier / router package, and being a rugby fan, the BT 'come on' mailers were blitzing my front doormat at just the right time.
(Never was a Sky fan)
So I signed up with BT - and the new 'home-hub' router arrives next week. I don't have a sat dish but I can wifi from the router, via my Samsung smartphone / HDMI dongle into the Tv.
I'll will have 'free' AP rugby (and other sports) for first year at least. Be interesting to see what BT do with me year 2.
So one personal anecdote does not a body of statistics make, but BT made it very easy for me to say 'yes' for this season. Repeat for a few hundred thousand punters, I can believe a significant sign up rate.

Sky don't charge too much per se.

What they do is prevent you from selecting a channel package of your choice without having to buy the bundle of channels that you or your familiarly will ever see without flicking through and bypassing in the forlorn hope of finding something of interest.

For me it's easy - BBC TV/Radio or a rugby match. That's it basically. Ad-minimism.

Portnoy, yes me too ideally. I have my Kingsholm season ticket for the fun of the live home games.
I needed new broadband anyway, so the new BT rugby channel (for Glaws away games) will be a bonus for me really.