Sportswashing RFC

[Margin__Walker]

Gloucester, Saints, Leicester and Newcastle in talks if this it to be believed

[Tichtheid]

This is not particularly sports washing, but I saw a headline about the WRU CEO calling for an end to free-to-air coverage of the 6N.

The direction of travel of the professional game is leading me to just watch my hometown club and no more.

[Hugo]

Between the football, golf, boxing and now this the Saudis are definitely buying up a lot of sport.

Oh and I see they have the 2034 world cup.

[Slick]

This is not particularly sports washing, but I saw a headline about the WRU CEO calling for an end to free-to-air coverage of the 6N.

The direction of travel of the professional game is leading me to just watch my hometown club and no more.

This.

Fuck around with the 6N and that’s me gone

[lemonhead]

This is not particularly sports washing, but I saw a headline about the WRU CEO calling for an end to free-to-air coverage of the 6N.

The direction of travel of the professional game is leading me to just watch my hometown club and no more.

Wasn't it more they want the 6N kept off the guaranteed FTA list so they could command a better price for broadcast rights?

You'd imagine if there wasn't the prospect of an Amazon waiting in the wings both terrestrial broadcasters could theoretically lowball ad infinitum.

[petej]

That will be the end of my support for Tigers. I fucking hate man City and Newcastle United and Chelsea before them. These things shouldn't be for sale to such regimes.

[Tichtheid]

This is not particularly sports washing, but I saw a headline about the WRU CEO calling for an end to free-to-air coverage of the 6N.

The direction of travel of the professional game is leading me to just watch my hometown club and no more.

Wasn't it more they want the 6N kept off the guaranteed FTA list so they could command a better price for broadcast rights?

You'd imagine if there wasn't the prospect of an Amazon waiting in the wings both terrestrial broadcasters could theoretically lowball ad infinitum.

The 6N isn't on the guaranteed FTA list as it is. It's on Category B, it can go to subscription as along as there are highlights or delayed showing of matches.The current contracts run out in a couple of years.

I don't know what happens at the moment, but a pooled bid between BBC, ITV and C4 might work, I assume there is some version of this at the moment. I feel it's important to keep Amazon, TNT or Sky etc out of it.

[Margin__Walker]

That will be the end of my support for Tigers. I fucking hate man City and Newcastle United and Chelsea before them. These things shouldn't be for sale to such regimes.

Yeah, I guess plenty won't see a problem as that's sport these days, but it would probably cross the line for me. Wouldn't feel too fun being a gay fan of one of these clubs.

[lemonhead]

This is not particularly sports washing, but I saw a headline about the WRU CEO calling for an end to free-to-air coverage of the 6N.

The direction of travel of the professional game is leading me to just watch my hometown club and no more.

Wasn't it more they want the 6N kept off the guaranteed FTA list so they could command a better price for broadcast rights?

You'd imagine if there wasn't the prospect of an Amazon waiting in the wings both terrestrial broadcasters could theoretically lowball ad infinitum.

The 6N isn't on the guaranteed FTA list as it is. It's on Category B, it can go to subscription as along as there are highlights or delayed showing of matches.The current contracts run out in a couple of years.

I don't know what happens at the moment, but a pooled bid between BBC, ITV and C4 might work, I assume there is some version of this at the moment. I feel it's important to keep Amazon, TNT or Sky etc out of it.

As in, there's a group of MPs lobbying for it to move to Category A. That's what prompted the WRU to kick off.

You'd hope they mean what they say and it's more of a bargaining chip than anything else. They must know what damage it could do if they ever did choose paywall.

[Tichtheid]

Wasn't it more they want the 6N kept off the guaranteed FTA list so they could command a better price for broadcast rights?

You'd imagine if there wasn't the prospect of an Amazon waiting in the wings both terrestrial broadcasters could theoretically lowball ad infinitum.

The 6N isn't on the guaranteed FTA list as it is. It's on Category B, it can go to subscription as along as there are highlights or delayed showing of matches.The current contracts run out in a couple of years.

I don't know what happens at the moment, but a pooled bid between BBC, ITV and C4 might work, I assume there is some version of this at the moment. I feel it's important to keep Amazon, TNT or Sky etc out of it.

As in, there's a group of MPs lobbying for it to move to Category A. That's what prompted the WRU to kick off.

You'd hope they mean what they say and it's more of a bargaining chip than anything else. They must know what damage it could do if they ever did choose paywall.

The Tory group who are pushing a motion in the Welsh government have at their backs a long history of treating everything as a commodity to be sold for asset stripping or a service to be privatised - long term damage? Pfft, who cares?

[Hal Jordan]

That will be the end of my support for Tigers. I fucking hate man City and Newcastle United and Chelsea before them. These things shouldn't be for sale to such regimes.

Yeah, I guess plenty won't see a problem as that's sport these days, but it would probably cross the line for me. Wouldn't feel too fun being a gay fan of one of these clubs.

Or a journalist criticising the team.

[fishfoodie]

That will be the end of my support for Tigers. I fucking hate man City and Newcastle United and Chelsea before them. These things shouldn't be for sale to such regimes.

Yeah, I guess plenty won't see a problem as that's sport these days, but it would probably cross the line for me. Wouldn't feel too fun being a gay fan of one of these clubs.

Or a journalist criticising the team.

Or you know, a woman.

The various unions have bust a bollock to try & get womens Rugby going, & credit where it;s due, it's starting to find its feet.

To now get into bed with the fucking Saudiis .....

[dpedin]

Fairly inevitable wasn't it? Run your league into the ground by dodgy owners, piss poor governance from a completely ineffective governing body and get into huge debt by thinking your the dogs bollocks and then cry about how unfair it all is when it goes tits up. The Saudis will pick up English Premiership for peanuts to them, an afterthought but just to ensure they have the full hand of sports under their control. This will create an imbalance in the whole of rugby as dodgy oil money will drag all the best players world wide into the league and ultimately will be the death of English rugby and the international team. We will soon see teams without any English or home grown players in them.

Has anyone thought what the plan is once the Saudis get fed up or move onto bigger and better things? Rugby union is just means to an end for them, there is no historical link or interest in the sport, all they want is to use rugby as a vehicle to get them to their bigger ambitions. They will discard rugby as quickly as they enter the game and won't give a shit in what state they leave it. In the interim the dodgy owners, hangers on and big businesses will make all the money and very very little will drift down into the grassroots. Everyone knows this but the flashing of filthy lucre waved in front of owners and players will be enough to persuade them they, like the LIV golfers, are doing it to grow the game!

[Prembore]

Park life

[SaintK]

Fairly inevitable wasn't it? Run your league into the ground by dodgy owners, piss poor governance from a completely ineffective governing body and get into huge debt by thinking your the dogs bollocks and then cry about how unfair it all is when it goes tits up. The Saudis will pick up English Premiership for peanuts to them, an afterthought but just to ensure they have the full hand of sports under their control. This will create an imbalance in the whole of rugby as dodgy oil money will drag all the best players world wide into the league and ultimately will be the death of English rugby and the international team. We will soon see teams without any English or home grown players in them.

Has anyone thought what the plan is once the Saudis get fed up or move onto bigger and better things? Rugby union is just means to an end for them, there is no historical link or interest in the sport, all they want is to use rugby as a vehicle to get them to their bigger ambitions. They will discard rugby as quickly as they enter the game and won't give a shit in what state they leave it. In the interim the dodgy owners, hangers on and big businesses will make all the money and very very little will drift down into the grassroots. Everyone knows this but the flashing of filthy lucre waved in front of owners and players will be enough to persuade them they, like the LIV golfers, are doing it to grow the game!

Who the fuck are you? Mystic Meg!!!!

[SaintK]

Thought I read somewhere that PRL rules say the no one business can have any more than 20% shareholding in multiple clubs.
So it's not going to be a multi, multi million pound investment even if it did get off the ground.

It's bad enough that Franklin Gardens is now Cinch Stadium, Saints can bugger off if it suddenly becomes Etihad

[Slick]

Fairly inevitable wasn't it? Run your league into the ground by dodgy owners, piss poor governance from a completely ineffective governing body and get into huge debt by thinking your the dogs bollocks and then cry about how unfair it all is when it goes tits up. The Saudis will pick up English Premiership for peanuts to them, an afterthought but just to ensure they have the full hand of sports under their control. This will create an imbalance in the whole of rugby as dodgy oil money will drag all the best players world wide into the league and ultimately will be the death of English rugby and the international team. We will soon see teams without any English or home grown players in them.

Has anyone thought what the plan is once the Saudis get fed up or move onto bigger and better things? Rugby union is just means to an end for them, there is no historical link or interest in the sport, all they want is to use rugby as a vehicle to get them to their bigger ambitions. They will discard rugby as quickly as they enter the game and won't give a shit in what state they leave it. In the interim the dodgy owners, hangers on and big businesses will make all the money and very very little will drift down into the grassroots. Everyone knows this but the flashing of filthy lucre waved in front of owners and players will be enough to persuade them they, like the LIV golfers, are doing it to grow the game!

In fairness, my dad was a founding member of Dharan Rugby Club

[Paddington Bear]

This is not particularly sports washing, but I saw a headline about the WRU CEO calling for an end to free-to-air coverage of the 6N.

The direction of travel of the professional game is leading me to just watch my hometown club and no more.

If they still exist in a decade, which for many looks unlikely

[sockwithaticket]

This will create an imbalance in the whole of rugby as dodgy oil money will drag all the best players world wide into the league and ultimately will be the death of English rugby and the international team. We will soon see teams without any English or home grown players in them.

Jesus Christ, nothing's happened yet and the RFU currently have soft requirements on EQP numbers. Incompetent as they are, they're still more than capable of rewriting those regs to be harder caps and thus prevent the total elimination of English players (which would, of course, leave them without a national team to sell out Twickenham).

Not, it should be said, that I want Saudi money in our game. It's just a bizarre bit of catastrophising to suggest the above.

[Hugo]

The 6N isn't on the guaranteed FTA list as it is. It's on Category B, it can go to subscription as along as there are highlights or delayed showing of matches.The current contracts run out in a couple of years.

I don't know what happens at the moment, but a pooled bid between BBC, ITV and C4 might work, I assume there is some version of this at the moment. I feel it's important to keep Amazon, TNT or Sky etc out of it.

As in, there's a group of MPs lobbying for it to move to Category A. That's what prompted the WRU to kick off.

You'd hope they mean what they say and it's more of a bargaining chip than anything else. They must know what damage it could do if they ever did choose paywall.

The Tory group who are pushing a motion in the Welsh government have at their backs a long history of treating everything as a commodity to be sold for asset stripping or a service to be privatised - long term damage? Pfft, who cares?

Its actually absurd just how much capitalism is an article of faith in our culture. The profit motive is above all.

It is more sacrosanct than nation, family, religion or community.

[JM2K6]

Fairly inevitable wasn't it? Run your league into the ground by dodgy owners, piss poor governance from a completely ineffective governing body and get into huge debt by thinking your the dogs bollocks and then cry about how unfair it all is when it goes tits up. The Saudis will pick up English Premiership for peanuts to them, an afterthought but just to ensure they have the full hand of sports under their control. This will create an imbalance in the whole of rugby as dodgy oil money will drag all the best players world wide into the league and ultimately will be the death of English rugby and the international team. We will soon see teams without any English or home grown players in them.

Has anyone thought what the plan is once the Saudis get fed up or move onto bigger and better things? Rugby union is just means to an end for them, there is no historical link or interest in the sport, all they want is to use rugby as a vehicle to get them to their bigger ambitions. They will discard rugby as quickly as they enter the game and won't give a shit in what state they leave it. In the interim the dodgy owners, hangers on and big businesses will make all the money and very very little will drift down into the grassroots. Everyone knows this but the flashing of filthy lucre waved in front of owners and players will be enough to persuade them they, like the LIV golfers, are doing it to grow the game!

You are extremely weird about English rugby.

[Tichtheid]

Fairly inevitable wasn't it? Run your league into the ground by dodgy owners, piss poor governance from a completely ineffective governing body and get into huge debt by thinking your the dogs bollocks and then cry about how unfair it all is when it goes tits up. The Saudis will pick up English Premiership for peanuts to them, an afterthought but just to ensure they have the full hand of sports under their control. This will create an imbalance in the whole of rugby as dodgy oil money will drag all the best players world wide into the league and ultimately will be the death of English rugby and the international team. We will soon see teams without any English or home grown players in them.

Has anyone thought what the plan is once the Saudis get fed up or move onto bigger and better things? Rugby union is just means to an end for them, there is no historical link or interest in the sport, all they want is to use rugby as a vehicle to get them to their bigger ambitions. They will discard rugby as quickly as they enter the game and won't give a shit in what state they leave it. In the interim the dodgy owners, hangers on and big businesses will make all the money and very very little will drift down into the grassroots. Everyone knows this but the flashing of filthy lucre waved in front of owners and players will be enough to persuade them they, like the LIV golfers, are doing it to grow the game!

You are extremely weird about English rugby.

I think that a lot of English rugby fans have no idea of the bad blood caused by the actions of a few arrogant people. This is from memory and goes back a long time so if I'm sketchy on a detail here or there I'll hold my hand up to that, but when the RFU negotiated a deal with Sky for 6 nations coverage on their own without the others, that was not a good move.

When some of the club owners demanded that the European competitions be changed because they insisted their clubs were at a disadvantage, most of the fans from other countries were thinking, "Who the fuck are you?".
These guys came in and took over certain clubs and ploughed their own money into it, plus getting backers from elsewhere. This gave them ownership of and dominance over the professional game in England at the expense of other Football Clubs (I use that term deliberately because some of them predated codification).
Now that is fine, it suited the game in England and I don't hear many complaining about it, but where the bad blood came in is that because they commandeered rugby in England, it looked from the outside that they assumed that they could do likewise in Europe.

The bad blood is not towards English rugby or English clubs or English supporters, rather it's towards these rich guys who assume because they are wealthy they own the entire sport.
Oh and the RFU did/do appear to be a shower of wankers

[JM2K6]

Fairly inevitable wasn't it? Run your league into the ground by dodgy owners, piss poor governance from a completely ineffective governing body and get into huge debt by thinking your the dogs bollocks and then cry about how unfair it all is when it goes tits up. The Saudis will pick up English Premiership for peanuts to them, an afterthought but just to ensure they have the full hand of sports under their control. This will create an imbalance in the whole of rugby as dodgy oil money will drag all the best players world wide into the league and ultimately will be the death of English rugby and the international team. We will soon see teams without any English or home grown players in them.

Has anyone thought what the plan is once the Saudis get fed up or move onto bigger and better things? Rugby union is just means to an end for them, there is no historical link or interest in the sport, all they want is to use rugby as a vehicle to get them to their bigger ambitions. They will discard rugby as quickly as they enter the game and won't give a shit in what state they leave it. In the interim the dodgy owners, hangers on and big businesses will make all the money and very very little will drift down into the grassroots. Everyone knows this but the flashing of filthy lucre waved in front of owners and players will be enough to persuade them they, like the LIV golfers, are doing it to grow the game!

You are extremely weird about English rugby.

I think that a lot of English rugby fans have no idea of the bad blood caused by the actions of a few arrogant people. This is from memory and goes back a long time so if I'm sketchy on a detail here or there I'll hold my hand up to that, but when the RFU negotiated a deal with Sky for 6 nations coverage on their own without the others, that was not a good move.

When some of the club owners demanded that the European competitions be changed because they insisted their clubs were at a disadvantage, most of the fans from other countries were thinking, "Who the fuck are you?".
These guys came in and took over certain clubs and ploughed their own money into it, plus getting backers from elsewhere. This gave them ownership of and dominance over the professional game in England at the expense of other Football Clubs (I use that term deliberately because some of them predated codification).
Now that is fine, it suited the game in England and I don't hear many complaining about it, but where the bad blood came in is that because they commandeered rugby in England, it looked from the outside that they assumed that they could do likewise in Europe.

The bad blood is not towards English rugby or English clubs or English supporters, rather it's towards these rich guys who assume because they are wealthy they own the entire sport.
Oh and the RFU did/do appear to be a shower of wankers

I am familiar with the arguments and am not exactly new to the reasoning put forward by our Celtic cousins as to why they love to hate us, to the point of agreeing with some of them - but that doesn't change what I said. Dpedin is extremely weird about English rugby. He's camroc on speed.