Quarter empty stadium for the grand final

Piss easy saints win, that I’ve predicted for what seems like a billion years because the competition is so predictable.

Of course saints will be happy, but clearly people are tuning out. Look at the empty seats.

SL has never been so bad.

Less empty seats than the last 2 years...

Quality of Super League is on a downward trend no doubt, but so is the amount of money in the pockets of our core fanbase.

Lowest crowd since 2001 if you exclude the last 2 years as anomalies.

Hopefully IMG can help run a competent promotional campaign for next year's finals.

Need different finalists and crucially a new winner....a Cinderella win akin to Leicester winning the premier League.
Neutrals arent going to folk out money to watch the same sides.
Any hope of parity on the field was washed away by the ridiculous appeal(s) by Saints off it midweek.
As a Cas fan I should be delighted with Leeds dropping short...but I don't feel anything.
Fan of 40 years and I feel ....meh.

Saints set the high standard 4 years ago and play tough, with intensity like an NRL side.

Its up to the rest of the league to up their game to get to that standard, Catalan and Wigan had a brief period but couldn't keep it going all season. I thought Leeds put in a great effort and had a few players missing that might have gave them more scoring points. At the start of the season I tipped them to get into the play offs, Rohan Smith has set a good base line and I think will feature more strongly next season.

As for other teams, they need to get their finger out, we probably have around 8 teams who are playing way below standard on and off the pitch.

Shouldn't they already be all over the RLWC? Tickets sales to date suggest that it's a WC that's having money flushed down it!

Have they spoken with our state funded broadcaster yet? There's quite an important match being played next weekend (not to mention two tomorrow) but

There is a big problem with neutral support not bothering with our finals anymore. Saints-Leeds is one of our better combinations in terms of fanbases but still Old Trafford far from full. Know money is tight right now but it wasnt as tight a year ago when tickets first went on sale, the Marketing just isn't good enough.

It’s not an easy sell though… which isn’t an excuse not to try to do better on that front, just an acknowledgement of where we’re at. We don’t have many highly competitive well balanced contests with great uncertainty of outcome or many stories to weave a compelling narrative around. It’s like we’ve combined the worst parts of the WWE and CFL.

While, I’d love to see a wider variety of clubs in the GF and a different winner, even that could be a tough sell I reckon. Perceptions of clubs are so entrenched that I suspect that a surprise Hudds-Salford GF, for example, would be perceived/framed as mostly a failure of Leeds-Wigan-Saints.

It's an often used term on here, but what do you actually mean by marketing, who is the targeted recipient and by what means do you propose that will get a return on the investment? How are you going to incentivise neutral fans to pay out if they simply aren't interested in the teams or product on show?

In its heyday the CC Final was the singular RL showcase event for the RL community - but now with SL GF, Magic Weekend, Big Bash, Playoff Finals etc you can only tap the market so many times.

Yes you are an NRL side,right down to undermining the officials and authority's when you don't get your own way. Ea-moan McManus makes the likes of Bobby Fulton look like a....err Saint!

Thats the problem, they rely on sending out emails and aiming social media posts at people who already follow their accounts. They are trying to milk the same dwindling audience.

Where are the billboard ads, the radio ads, TV ads, cheap tickets for kids in Manchester if an adult brings them along etc.

Well, that's the question - are billboard ads, radio ads etc an effective way to attract a new audience ? Do cheap tickets generate a sustainable growth (or do people just expect cheap tickets forever)?

I've seen RU clubs have massive event games at Wembley - yet it seems to have little impact on sustainable growth in terms of Premiership rugby attendance.

It always concerns me that clubs, such as Saints & Wigan have huge onfield success but little market penetration outside their immediate area - and even the most aggressive billboard campaign is unlikely to change that.

Has the game ever grown in term of attendance or have any crowd increases just been proportional (or not) to a growing local population - 100+ yrs on and I'd guess for most clubs their fans are still predominantly drawn from 5-10 mile radius - whilst clubs on the doorsteps of Liverpool & Manchester continue to miss out on engaging with those populations.

But I also suppose we need to consider how 'measures of success' might have changed - and whether physical attendance is the right marker, or is it social media engagement, TV viewing figures, YouTube streams etc.

Or maybe the Saints Club are more professional and the RFL/Disciplinary are more amateur.

What we saw was Saints making a second appeal because the disciplinary response themselves was a frivolous one, all fans over this season have said the disciplinary is not fit for purpous. Saints have now exposed that situation and we may see some of balance being intoduced next year....in saying that I don't think I will hold my breath on that.

The first test is what will they do with Austin twisting the ankle of Lomax in the tackle yesterday.

IMO the test is what LMS gets for grabbing the touch judge. Brad O'Neill got 2 games for bumping into a ref who joined the defensive line.