The idea has grown on me all day but what to do with points in the 2nd half of the season.

I`d be inclined to halve them in all the leagues but especially in the middle league rather than put them to zero in that one.

This still rewards the effort of the first half of the season and give the original championship clubs a small advantage against the 4 relegated.

For me though we also need to seriously look how we pack the grounds across the game rather than milk loyal fans.

We need to get tickets prices down - right down.

Too long we've hitched ourselves to football and ticket inflation.

We`re a northern sport and we are hurting much more in the recession than the south east.

2 hours minimum wage - 12.38 is where we need to be getting a majority of our tickets priced.

That's going to be close to how much you could spend on a few pints in the pub watching it on telly.

Money and lack of it, is at the root of many of the problems within the game at present.

I also think its wrong for fans to blame the RFL for THEIR clubs inability to generate income.
The money distributed by the RFL be it TV money or other income should be the icing on the cake, not clubs main source of income.

Sadly the sport of RL has become a sport with a few self sufficient clubs, and a large number of clubs surviving off RFL benefits. A few of these benefit clubs are wanting to move off their addiction, but for the vast majority, their appears to be little desire to progress.

^^^^^^^^^^
THIS

The figure of 10,000 average fans per game (that I keep repeating) is where the clubs need to be heading for.......at an average of £15 per ticket and £15 residual spend (beer/pies/merch) then the clubs will generate £3,900,000 in income before sponsorship (shirt/player/matchday). Then you have SkyTV putting in another £1,300,000....so your clubs are looking at a turnover of between £5,500,000 and maybe £8,000,000.....all on real income with no need for a "sugar daddy".....this is a sustainable sport, with room to grow.

All clubs with aspirations of being in SL come 2015 should be made to produce a quantifiable business plan,independently audited, as to how they will attempt to get to 10,000 fans and how long they think it will take them. None of this "it's a new stadium, fans will flock to us" or "we'll double the price of our ST's after a year or two cheapies" or my favourite..."we'llsign a few star names and the fans will flock in".....but proper, budgeted and realistic business plans.
The game can't rely on Sugar daddies.....HKA have lost theirs, London lose theirs soon and a few others are complaining....the game needs paying spectators or it will eventually revert back to a semi-pro comp with one or 2 full time teams.....
We know about Crusaders, Wakey and Bradford, together with Salfords near miss, but what the did London say to the Licencing guys last time out? We're on 3,380 average but will try to get it down to under 2k by next time around



Before anyone says "but you need a winning team"......you don't. What you need is a winning MARKETING team!

I'm sure Ian Lenegan was clueless until he attended one of the RFL's seminars.

If people aren't turning up to your seminars, maybe they're no good, or simply uninspiring.

You can market all you like, but if the underlying product just isn't interesting to enough people there's only so far you can go. For example, Sky televise netball. Millions have played it. A bit of marketing and it would attract 1000s right?

In the case of RL, we also suffer from it just not being 'interesting enough'. We who DO go think it is, obviously, but we can bang on to each other about how much we love going, but all we're doing then is preaching to the choir. We need to be honest and accept that for a variety of reasons, there are a lot of people, who, confronted with a ton of marketing for say London, will say, "what's the point? There's no star players, they mostly lose, and the games don't matter because they can't even go down. I like a bit of Rugby League, but there's a lot of other stuff to do on a weekend." We can get as frustrated as we like with that attitude ( and don't accuse me of having it, I drive 120 miles round trip to support my team ) but frustration acheives nothing. Realism does.

As you say, London's attendances have dropped. Ask those who've stopped going, why? Not enough marketing? Doubt it.

Don't get me wrong. You're right, there's NOT enough marketing, and when there is, it tends to be unfocused and generally poor. But even a complete transformation in marketing won't be nearly enough without structural change.

It does here and in Aussie.....and I should know, I market it





I get up at 3am to listen to Northern commentary of Londons away games.....I only started watching the team in 2002 so only witnessed 2 play-off games (losses) before moving here in 2009.....but attended games before then regardless of how they were.

I filled AWAY coaches (75 seats to WALES, 50 seater to Wakey) in 2009....the club ran FREE buses in 2006 and 2007 and couldn't fill any of them...why did people pay me in 2009? BECAUSE I MARKETED THEM....

We are all aware of Bradford's relatively recent problems but take a look back to when they first started playing in Superleague.

Opposing fans laughed at the music played, pitch announcements, mascots screaming around on beach buggies etc. But it worked: people came to see, especially families. They paid their entrance money, bought food, merchandise & lottery tickets, joined in with all the "fun" and contributing greatly to Bradford's coffers. And all this in a stadium that was hardly "state of the art".

What Bradford did do in the early days was to work hard at getting good news nearer the front of the newspapers than the back. Non-sports fans tend not to read anything on pages beyond the classified ads, so making sure news was printed at the front of the paper was paramount in attracting 'new' fans.

Print media is of course on the way out but the concept is still the same: get good news closer to the front than the back

Ian Lenegan doesnt think so. Nor Gary Hetherington. Nor McManus or Moran. These people regularly do turn up. Then again they arent strangely obsessed with Nigel Wood and his suits.

IT pains me to say this but I do agree with you we need to get rugby league talked about

Peter Deakin should have been snapped up by the RFL as their head of marketing at that time, to roll his vision and ideas out across the whole sport and not just one club. I think he was the one person within the game who could have achieved the necessary growth in the sport's profile and made SL a much bigger animal.

Great, more of that please. But it's not enough on its own to overcome the structural problems of a league with 8 teams in the playoffs and no relegation.