http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/nrl-suffers-another-hit-as-tv-ratings-down-for-the-second-year-in-a-row/story-fnp0lyn3-1227054536927

Posted in full as the Telie normally has a block and its not on the News site.. tis interesting if our rating and crowds go up..

Me thinks some NRL folk still care about the NRL but sorta care less than they used too...

Some big numbers down on 9, Fox and Sky NZ ... sorta makes me madder the Sad Bitter Shits still have BashEar as their caller ..

To the article...

"""FOR the second year running, the NRL has suffered a major ratings hit with TV audiences down by another 3.6 million across Australia and New Zealand in 2014.

The NRL has also failed to reach its crowd target of 16,500 for this season, recording a 15,900 average that was almost identical to last year’s attendance result.

The Daily Telegraph yesterday obtained the final TV ratings figures for the 26-round regular season, which reveal significant drops for all three official broadcasters — Channel Nine, Fox Sports, and Sky New Zealand.

With fans increasingly turning to social and digital media, Nine’s lost an estimated 2.3 million viewers across all free-to-air slots for competition matches. That equates to a seven per cent slump on last year, which, in turn, was down 3.8 per cent on 2012.

Pay TV ratings are slipping away even faster, with NRL audiences for Fox Sports games on Saturday, Sunday and Monday down 10 per cent — a loss of 1 million sets of eyeballs across the regular season. The downward spiral continued from last year, when Fox Sports ratings suffered an 8.5 per cent slide from 2012.

And in New Zealand, where the Warriors failed to make the finals for the third straight season, ratings were down a whopping 21 per cent from 12 months ago.

The great irony of back-to-back seasons of plummeting ratings is their coincidence with code’s richest-ever broadcast deal — a five-year contract worth $1.025 billion. With television audiences down across the board thanks to the rise of new media, the pattern looks set to continue for the term of the contract, placing a major question mark over the NRL’s ability to match the current price when the current rights expire at the end of 2017.

Despite the figures, NRL marketing boss Paul Kind remains confident the game will continue to attract big dollars from the networks because it as a guaranteed ratings winner when compared to other entertainment categories such as drama and reality TV.

“The value of live sport will be just as important — if not more important — in the future,” Kind said.

“It’s hard for any broadcaster to generate big numbers on a regular base. These figures might be less than what they were, but they are still very big compared to what people are watching for the rest of the week.

“For both Nine and Fox Sports, live sport is a fundamental part of their business. The trend around individual numbers might be changing, but what won’t change is how important live sport is to those networks.”

Acknowledging that less people were watching TV, Kind said Nine had concentrated more on audience share for its NRL broadcasts, as opposed to surpassing the numbers of yesteryear. With the help of a late burst via Thursday night football, audience share had remained stable from 2013.

“That was significant for them,” Kind said. “They needed the back end of the year to pull through for it to be a ratings success and it was.

“There’s a trend around television with fewer people watching — that’s our read on the free-to-air space. But when you throw Origin into the mix, and a successful finals series, I think Nine will be satisfied.”

Kind said Fox Sport’s ratings on Monday night had suffered, because the network had chosen to screen its first choice on Super Saturday, which runs for nine straight hours on most weekends. To balance the bloodshed, The Matty Johns Show — broadcast post-game on Monday nights — has been a hit.

Asked about the erosive effect of social and digital media on the NRL’s television ratings, Kind replied: “It’s probably a factor for all of TV. Digital and social media are alternative ways for people to take rugby league in, but it’s still too early to measure the exact effect it’s had.”