Channel Seven has sensationally won the rights to broadcast the 2013 Rugby League World Cup, beating out current Free To Air broadcaster Channel Nine.
The 2013 Rugby League World Cup, which will be held in Great Britain, is a huge pick up for the Seven Network and breaks the stranglehold that Channel Nine has had on the sport for the last couple of decades.
It will be interesting to see how Channel Seven handles the World Cup and what type of promotion they give the competition.
Over the last few international competitions Channel Nine has been terrible, only showing thew couple of games they are interested in and in some cases not broadcasting games Australia has been involved in at all.
Hopefully Channel Seven gives the World Cup the coverage it deserves and allows people in Australia to watch a number of different teams.
It will also be interesting to see who Channel Seven gets to commentate on games. Hopefully they won’t just use the UK commentary because sitting through a whole month of listening to Poms talking up England will be brutal.
All of this news will be very disappointing to Channel Nine’s commentary team who have joked about who will be getting a free trip to Great Britain at the end of the year to cover the World Cup. It seems someone forgot to tell the self appointed “Home of Rugby League” that they needed to buy the TV rights first!
You can read Channel Sevens reaction to securing the 2013 World Cup rights here:Â http://au.sports.yahoo.com/league/news/article/-/17714580/seven-secures-rugby-league-world-cup-2013/
this is good now perhaps we can now use the money for some tv promotion.