The dates and times of the majority of the opening fixtures in the first round of the Challenge Cup and the whole of weekly round one in the Betfred Championship have been released along with the schedule and arrangements for the live streaming of games.

For Championship fans there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that all of the games are going to be staggered and streamed on the OurLeague App and site, the bad news is that with the exception of the home sides season ticket holders, you will have to pay to get access.

We’ve now updated our fixtures for the opening round of the Challenge Cup and the Championship. OurLeague will be streaming five of the eight Challenge Cup games with two of the other three being picked up by the BBC for ‘free to air’ streaming. Four games will take place on the Saturday with one on the Sunday. The opening game, Sheffield Eagles v. York City Knights will be covered live by new competition sponsors Betfred with details yet to be released.

All seven Betfred Championship games will be streamed over the weekend of the 2nd to 4th April with two games on the Friday, two on the Saturday and three on the Sunday. Home team season ticket holders will be able to get a code to stream their sides game live but everyone else will pay either £4.95 per game for games purchased in advance or £10.00 purchased on the day. There will also be day passes available at £15.00 and weekend passes for £20.00.

You will therefore be able to see a whole weekends action, seven live games, for the cost of one ground entry. But with the potential for five weekends in a month you could be stung for up to £100.00 a month should you not want to miss a minute of the action.

This does seem a little on the steep side when you consider that a Sky Sports subscription for £18 a month will get you access to all Super League games until crowds are allowed back into stadia, along with some NRL games and a whole host of other sports including the football, golf, cricket and formula 1. Watch NRL, which gets you access to all NRL games, representative matches and several other programmes costs £130 a year or £13 a month.