The Rugby Football League, the governing body for rugby league in England, has announced that the national team’s upcoming Test match against Samoa will be streamed live online, with fans required to pay £3.49 (€4.08/$4.34) to watch the match.
England faces Samoa at Campbelltown Sports Stadium in Leumeah, a suburb of the Australian city of Sydney, on May 5 and the game will be streamed live in the UK and across Europe via rugby-league.com.
Supporters can access the match for free by purchasing a ticket for this year’s Magic Weekend, an annual event featuring the 12 teams that compete in the Super League club competition, between now and 10:30am BST on May 5. Fans will need to enter the ENGVSAMOA promotion code at the time of purchase in order to access the stream.
The RFL’s chief commercial officer, Roger Draper, said that the decision to charge fans to watch the match was made due to changing viewing habits, and said the £3.49 fee represented “tremendous value.”
He added: “This one-off game also gives us the perfect opportunity to test and learn more about the market for live streaming as we begin to prepare for the future landscape of sports broadcasting and how rugby league can best take advantage of it. We value all our broadcast partnerships tremendously and terrestrial coverage for our national team is very important to us, which is why we have secured deals that will show all of England’s games in both the 2017 and 2021 Rugby League World Cups live on terrestrial TV but habits are changing and we are excited to explore this opportunity.”
Draper said that the RFL discussed selling the rights with “a number of organisations,” but added that the terms offered were not acceptable.
The game against Samoa will serve as a warm-up match for this year's Rugby League World Cup, which takes place from October 26 to December 2 in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.