Quote: Gazemous "We should just disagree and commit to what we have, and instead focus on growing the sport's audience - that doesn't happen without marketing effort. If the RFL hired a decent marketing director and put in place a long-term plan that would be a good start, at the moment I suspect they have no idea on what type of audience they want, let alone how they attract them to our game.'"
The problem with the marketing is that it isn't just the RFL's problem to fix. The bulk of the marketing actually has to come from the clubs - and that in my view is where the key point of failure is. The clubs are the primary point of consumption, and the building of any audiences comes at that key point.
The RFL's "consumer" marketing isn't that bad - not perfect, but not anywhere near as bad as some will make out. The problem is with how the game is marketed commercially, but this is where the RFL are hamstrung by the clubs.
The RFL can only approach prospective sponsors and sell the audiences that are provided to them by the clubs, but when the clubs aren't growing their audiences or reaching new audiences, not attracting enough "ABC1" audiences (despite there being plenty of them on the doorstep of RL land), and grossly under-selling the sport with poor marketing initiatives and poorly executed cheap ticket offers, there is relatively little they can do.
If I were the RFL, I'd be spelling out an ABM strategy to each and every club. Tell the clubs that "in three years time, we want the Super League to be generating £x million in sponsorship, we want the competition to be sponsored by y and we expect clubs to generate annual ticket sales revenue of £z million" - and then give the marketing directors at each club an opportunity to present their marketing strategy to attract the audiences that will help them to achieve that.
The RFL needs to be more ruthless with the clubs who are underperforming but without the framework of licencing, there's not an awful lot they can do with those that don't perform.