Instead, they lobbied for an earlier Saturday kickoff. <\/p>\n
Sky declined that suggestion, opting to screen a match between Australia A against a Japan XV in the 5pm slot.<\/p>\n
A statement from the broadcaster said: \u201cWe wanted to offer Sky customers a full afternoon and evening schedule of rugby content, culminating in the primetime NPC match.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, Sky wants to make key matches like this semifinal as successful as possible from a viewership perspective. Our data shows that viewers prefer an evening kickoff time over an afternoon kickoff time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sky TV: “Our data shows that viewers prefer an evening kickoff time.” Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
New Zealand Rugby\u2019s general manager of community rugby, Steve Lancaster, said NZR \u201cappreciate[s] the efforts they [Sky] have made across the season to promote and broadcast our provincial competitions\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added that showing Heartland Championship games such as the Meads Cup final between Mid Canterbury and Thames Valley at 2.05pm this Saturday highlighted how some games \u201cmay come up against other big sporting events such as motorsport or cricket\u201d. <\/p>\n
The cricket v rugby clash has left Christchurch sports fans facing a tough choice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey [Sky] don\u2019t want to give in to the other network [as] the cricket\u2019s on TVNZ,\u201d said fan Chris Ferguson, who bought Black Caps tickets for himself and his father months ago. <\/p>\n
\u201cSports fans are now in a position where they have to choose which one to go to. It\u2019s just not right.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Black Caps play in Christchurch on Saturday night. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
Fellow dual-sport fan Brett Collins said he emailed Canterbury Rugby to push for an earlier kickoff as soon as he learned of the clash. <\/p>\n
\u201cSports fans in Christchurch are quite passionate about both codes, and I\u2019d love the opportunity to be able to go and watch both live. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s pretty ridiculous \u2026 to not even try and maximise people being able to watch when you try to compete with an international cricket match is not the best move.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sky said scheduling conflicts \u201calways involve trade-offs\u201d, with Lancaster confirming the NPC final will be played at 4.05pm next Saturday. <\/p>\n
For those fans wanting to make the best of both worlds, leaving the Canterbury match at roughly 9.15pm would mean they could catch the second innings at Hagley Oval, which is set to finish about 11.45pm. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Instead, they lobbied for an earlier Saturday kickoff. Sky declined that suggestion, opting to screen a match between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,17094,7022,8126,42574,3019,14134,62240,39172,1634,1872,9517,33758,7973,10543,2683,111,139,2551,22308,69,56769,62241,1534,62239,5500,33397,213,4412,165,13983,102],"class_list":["post-80939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-avoid","tag-black","tag-canterbury","tag-caps","tag-clash","tag-decision","tag-declined","tag-describing","tag-england","tag-face","tag-fans","tag-fixture","tag-leaves","tag-match","tag-move","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-night","tag-npc","tag-nz","tag-pretty","tag-ridiculous","tag-saturday","tag-scheduling","tag-semifinal","tag-situation","tag-sports","tag-teams","tag-their","tag-tough","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}