Quote: bramleyrhino "
As for the second day, simply writing the poor crowd down to the draw card lets some clubs off the hook. The same clubs perpetually undersell this event and the sport in general and its time that was called out. Why aren't these clubs growing their audiences and selling more tickets?
There are 12 clubs all with an equal stake in Magic Weekend and we have the usual suspects doing just enough to tread water whilst the other clubs bring disproportionately more of the audience and value. These clubs need dragging into Red Hall for their long term marketing plans to be scrutinised, because what they have at the moment isn't working.'"
Whilst we can no doubt look to an ideal world where all clubs are doing the same to attract fans, we're not in one.
Saturday had 3 local derbies involving 4 clubs with 10k+ attendances. The league leaders, last year's league leaders and the Grand Final winners. It was massively stacked. Only one club outside the top 6, and you could have predicted that before the fixtures came out.
Sunday saw 2 derbies and one left over game involving a foreign side against an underperforming small club. Only Hull were in the Top 6 before the weekend started, the rest lower league teams with much smaller fan bases. They completely put all eggs in the Saturday basket and relied on the Hull derby to at least shift a few tickets.
A better balance would have been to sway the Leeds/ Cas game with the Catalans/Salford game. Saturday would still have featured more big clubs, which shows you just how imbalanced the days were.