Super League at 30: how media coverage has changed since 1996

Super League at 30: how media coverage has changed since 1996 After covering changes for matchgoing fans , Gavin Willacy assesses how coverage has transformed for fans at home By No Helmets Required S uper League celebrated its 30th birthday in style at the weekend. The main party was at Headingley, where Leeds hosted Warrington in a repeat of one of the league’s original fixtures. As Sky Sports anchor Brian Carney welcomed guest after illustrious guest to reminisce about their past heroics, we were shown clips from three of the opening round of games from 1996. That’s because only three were televised. And that was one more than Sky normally showed, despite having spent £87m on the new competition . All seven Super League games were shown live last weekend. We now consume the game on our phones rather than through hourly radio bulletins. Unless you had a satellite dish on your house in the mid-1990s, you couldn’t watch Super League’s launch. For the opening weekend, Sky sent the media circus to Paris, Oldham and Leeds. By all accounts, members of the press pack were well oiled. In 2026, Super League on Sky is just a well-oiled machine. Fans from 1996 would have been surprised by a few things at the weekend. Once they had recovered from the shock of seeing Leigh play Toulouse in Super League, they would have been delighted to watch the sport live on BBC2 at tea time on Saturday, but bewildered to hear that Sky are paying just £21.5m to show every game this season (compared to the £17.3m they paid for two games a week in 1996) and that the BBC are not adding to the rights pot at all. And why were there so few people in the press box, with most of them working for BBC radio? Every national newspaper had a full-time rugby league correspondent writing daily stories in 1996, albeit they often had to explain them to editors in London after their Manchester offices had closed en masse. Monday papers had full pages of match reports, even in the broadsheets. Now some struggl...