How do we get the IRB and USA Rugby to sell Television Rights to Basic Cable?

Question

How do we get the IRB and USA Rugby to sell Television Rights to rugby to a Basic Cable or network television station. No ordinary Joe will see the World cup in America because it is only on Pay-per-view. Are they telling me no one would watch it on network TV? Surely It would be better to Give the rights away and get exposure than make a little money from Pay per view outlets?

Answer 1

Fortunately for me one of my temmates has a subscription to Setanta which has the rights to all of the World Cup matches, so I will most likely be camping out at his house to watch as much as I can.  I've still been trying to locate a bar in my area that is going to have the matches...right now in the Greater St. Louis area there is one pub that I know of downtown, but nothing near where I live.  I'm hoping ESPN gets their heads out of their collective asses and covers the world cup a lot on Sportscenter, but unfortunately I don't see that happening, even though it is  the 3rd most watched event worldwide behind the olympics and soccer world cups.  

The problem is there is no foresight for rugby coverage in the US, many network execs see currently rugby has little viewership the tiny amount of times it is on, but what they don't realize is that it's the fastest growing sport in the US, and although they might take a hit on viewers and sponsor dollars now, that will easily be made up if they lock down a solid long term contract for television rights in the US for the next two World Cups.

The sad thing is we can't even get ESPN which televises darts and poker to televise the NA4 and Superleague matches here in the US, they did get some of the Churchill cup last year, but it was on ESPNU, which I don't know anyone who subscribes to that besides bars, but hopefully that is a sign that the winds of change are coming, though that doesn't help much for this year's world cup.

Answer 2

Watch it on the web. Your not going to get it changed!

Is the same here in Europe over league matches.  In the end England and France have pulled all their countrie's teams out of the Heineken Cup, there's only Irish and Italin teams left in it!