Interesting times for the future of the game...

rlhttps://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/rugby-league-news/eddie-hearn-meets-rfl-london-1267975rl

We hope let’s see if any thing comes of it we badly need something

He's the wrong answer to the wrong question.

The sport needs to stop looking for a 'saviour' and start focusing on how it can save itself.

What an unusual comment.

How will it "save itself" without outside influence?

There are 12 Super League clubs. That means that there are at least 12 full-time people in this sport with the words "marketing", "media" or "PR" in their job title.

The answer to the game's problems is to get those 12 people to all do their jobs properly, so that the game reaches new audiences, so that it earns media coverage and so that the grounds are full. If those people can't do that, then they need to find new jobs.

The answer isn't to look for a self-publicist with a gimmick, and that's exactly what Hearn represents.

We need to stop this notion that it is the RFL and RFL alone responsible for promoting the sport and put the pressure on the clubs. They're the primary point of consumption, they're the ones who should be engaging with the audience week to week and they're the ones who are (with one or two exceptions) the biggest point of failure for this sport.

This idea that we need a "saviour" like Hearn isn't solving the root cause of our problems, and Hearn is far from the man to address them.

RL has nothing to lose and much to gain.

Save itself etc etc, I don't think so. Needs someone with a track record to bring RL into the 21st century (or late 90's in our case)

Why can't it save itself? Other than the fact that it's more effort?

I understand why people find someone like Hearn appealing; he represents the easy option. He's represents our knight in shining armour, swooping in to save the day.

Except I don't think he can do that. Nigel Wood, for all his faults, was not the reason why Huddersfield and Salford can't sell tickets, he's not the reason why Wakefield have handed their notice to their landlord every year for the past 2-3 years, he's not the reason why clubs are voting to give our talent a pay cut, and he's not the reason why so few clubs are reaching audiences that broadcasters and sponsors are interested in. Hearn doesn't fix any of that.

The RFL aren't blameless or without fault, but much of the work that they do (particuarly on digital) is so far ahead of what many of the clubs produce it's frightening. I've got no issue with external influences coming into the sport, but it has to be for the right reasons and with the right objectives in mind - and absolving the clubs and their marketing, media and PR departments of their responsibilities to reach audiences, get themselves in the media, get themselves in the public conscience and to sell tickets are not the right reasons or objectives.

Most of the fundamental problems facing the sport commercially are well within the remit of people already within the sport, and they're issues that the sport should be able to fix itself. Yes, it will take a lot of work. Yes, it will need clubs to properly invest in marketing (rather than viewing it as a cost centre) and yes, it will need a change in thinking. But before someone like Hearn can come in and have an influence, we have to get the foundations right. When it comes to issues like audience and the quality of the product / talent, the RFL's hands are largely tied by what the clubs are contributing - and at the moment that contribution is way, way below what it needs to be.

We already have one hanger-on on the Red Hall pay-roll in Brian Barwick - we don't need another one.

I think that the Super League needs to take a long hard look at the admission prices that the clubs are charging. They are pricing people out of attending games, particularly the hardcore 'home and away' brigades, who may be picking and choosing their games. It's a game of the people and if they want full stands then it needs to be priced accordingly.

I completely agree with the point Bramley makes around the clubs simply have to do more - far too many of them are content with their lot. Generally, if people are going to fall in love with the game and become long term supporters, they'll attach themselves to a club - so it's the clubs who have the best opportunity to entice people in. They simply do not do enough to broaden their horizons.

That being said, the RFL do also need to make vast improvements - the leadership from the top is pretty non-existent and the game just seems to bumble along aimlessly, trying out plenty of new gimmicks along the way looking for a silver bullet.

On the Hearns, and without going into too much detail, I can see the attraction - they've had good success with snooker, darts and boxing, but they are a different beast to a team sport, with a formal 'season'. They rely heavily on making 'events', which is much more difficult to do on a weekly basis. I could see that they would market the game well on the rivalries, but that would only work so far, as the teams play each other too often for it to work long term. In a different era their approach would have worked particularly well, where players spoke openly about what they thought of other teams/players (not the boring cliché standard answers all players/coaches now give to the media) and where players could go out and have a battle against each other (McDermott v Fieldon), but the way the sport is now, it wouldn't really work.

I can't see the Hearns being the solution - they'd want too much money (that just isn't available) or a stake in the game for their services, and their approach would only work so far. There are much more fundamental issues with the game that the Hearns would have no interest in sorting. Snazzy and clever marketing is required, but the long term success of the game requires a drains up approach - get more people playing and involved in the game at grass roots, across a wider spectrum of society - they are the long term supporters of the game.

Agree with this. £60 for me, the Mrs and our 5 year old lad at Widnes on Sunday is far too much IMO (this isn't a dig at Widnes by the way, as that price is par for the course nowadays). I'm in a fortunate position where we can afford that type of money, but I'm also on a really good wage - if prices had been that type of equivalent back in the 80's, there's no way my Mum and Dad would have been able to afford it, and me and my family would have likely been lost to the game forever.

£60 plus petrol, food, drink etc is an expensive do for a couple of hours entertainment. I can certainly see why families would stay at home and just watch the TV games.

And there lies the problem. We need a centralised forward looking direction/strategy from someone or a team that is independent, has Sport management or business experience and who will listen to the interests of the 12 SL or even 30+ clubs.

The league's just becoming too devalued IMO. Too many games spent pursuing a third-rate trophy, bigger clubs putting their focus into aus-based friendlies when it suits, a fixture list skewed by the magic fixture, games shuffled randomly between Thursday-Sunday and tackling techniques coached so thoroughly that it's easy to interpret injury avoidance as a lack of commitment. Even the attacking side is now coached to be low risk. It's very miss-able these days.

That said, I suspect that involvement with the Hearns would actually worsen some of these factors.

I'd tend to agree. At the moment, the clubs tend to have power in the wrong areas, and don't have enough responsonility / culpability in others. It was one of the reasons I supported the principle of franchising, but the way it was implemented was all wrong.

There needs to be a clear vision for the sport in terms of where we see ourselves in 5, 10 and 20 years time, about the sorts of sponsors we want to be engaging, the crowd growth we want to see, about the audience demographics we want to reach and the levels of revenue we should be generating from media, supporters and commercial.

Where the big disconnect lies is that such a vision then needs to be handed down to the clubs to deliver on, and that is the key point of failure. Franchising should have been used as a way of addressing that - any club that doesn't make a significant contribution to such a vision is at risk of losing their place - but franchising was never implemeted in that way. Instead, we had criteria that was based on the wrong things, and encouraged the wrong behaviour - attendances criteria that only encouraged clubs to give out cheap tickets rather than actually do some proper marketing for example. The clubs should have less power to vote for things like real-terms salary cap reductions or the abolition of reserve teams because again, it encourages the wrong behaviour.

Personally, I'd like to see a proper franchising-based structure that really focuses on raising standards off the field. I don't think we'll get that, because too few clubs want to make that effort and investment, but it's what the sport sorely needs. People clamouring for a Hearn are simply clamouring for an easy answer.

Until we have those higher standards, the RFL is marketing the sport with one hand tied behind its back. It's going to broadcasters like Sky with an audience that is falling, and is made up of people that advertisers don't care about. I don't care who you are, that's a hard sell when the TV rights renewal comes up.

I agree about the value of each league game in Super League now. Whilst the Grand Final is obviously a pretty good event as a standalone and there have been some terrific matches over the years, you have to look at what it does to the quality and intensity of the rest of the season.

The NRL has a Grand Final and turns out high quality intense matches every week throughout the season over there however they have genuine squad depth leading to genuine competition for places, as well as potentially lucrative contract rewards for playing well regularly.

Over here we seriously lack squad depth, there is often little competition for places in teams and everyone knows that they only have to peak for the last 3 weeks of the year to win the grand prize. Difficult to sell a mid-season game lacking intensity and enthusiasm, the apathy of the teams spreads to supporters and they turn their backs.

The issue with allowing the SL teams to retain the power and decision making is that the likes of Wakefield and others potentially wouldn't be part of a bigger extended game and as such they will prevent expansion at every opportunity. Hence the need for an independent central long term strategy.