Quote: barham red "I think it's a fine balance of expansion whilst not throwing away tradition. Expansion needs to be exactly that, expanding the comp not just the geography. What I mean is that introducing eg. Toronto will be good but to do that we shouldn't collapse leigh which is what we seem to do.
TV is critical but to appeal to tv we need to fill stadiums as well. Why would tv be interested in a product fans can't be bothered to attend.
No easy answer'"
That's an interesting point.
However, I would suggest that TV is mainly interested in itself and not actually interested in what it may be showing, other than having something to air for "x" hours per day/week.
Since the onset of SL, we have gone from playing fixtures on Sundays, to having them on Thursday, FRiday, Saturday and Sunday, which has rock all to do with anyone wanting full stadia, it's purely down to Sky wanting to maximise the number of hours that it can fill the screen in the corner of your room.
We have effectively made it harder for actual fans to watch games in order to give Sky more games to broadcast, which necessarily, reduces the quality of the "product" on view.
Great for the armchair viewer but not great for the actual fans and the chopping and changing of fixtures, just to suit the broadcaster has a negative effect on attendances and ultimately means that the "true" fans struggle to make it to every game.
My club had every on of it's Super 8 fixtures changed, all at relatively short notice.
Some of these were because our game was on Sky and others had to be moved due to the ripple effect of other games being chosen.
Please tell me how this can help ANY club improve it's attendance's.