You can lead a club to a marketing opportunity, but you can't make it invest the time and money to exploit it to the fullest.

The RFL should not be dictating to its member clubs how they run their businesses on such a micro level.

The NRL do.

Clubs are "invited" to play intheir competition, but woe betide if you screw up.

In this country it's who shouts loudest and a slap on the wrist!

The RFL need to grow a pair.

Spot on...both times.

How did the Marketing/Promotional company hired to promote the "Big Hit" in London 2013 manage to get 67,000 people into the stadium? IIRC that was the biggest crowd ever to watch an England RL match anywhere in the world....how did they get these people into the game? What did they sell to them?

Yep, they really came down on Newcastle like a tonne of bricks eh.

eh?
The Knights are pretty well supported in the NRL.

The GB brand secured a Wembley attendance of 73,631 in 1992 against Australia. It didn't require a year long "BIG HIT" double header sales pitch to attract a decent attendance, nor did it require ludicrously cheap tickets on offer either.

I
I think you mean cronulla!

Your marketing has to be credible a game between two lowly ranked sides without any local rivalry cannot be marketed as an equal to two top sides playing each other. What you are saying is Cas v Salford should be marketed on a par with Wigan v Saints - that is simply not credible. The public will not swallow that message.

The sport needs to find its market its an elite sport trying to attract families primarily in the north of England. As a result pricing needs to be at a level that is affordable for your target audience. Soccer has huge quantities of single males attending with disposable income who will sacrifice everything for their weekly fix. RL has more family attendees with different priorities it needs to be priced accordingly.

I would suggest Leeds Rhinos are in a good position to charge top dollar yet they are freezing prices, offering interest free credit on season tickets etc. You may think the sport is worth more and should be marketed/priced at a premium level if the public were prepared to pay more then the clubs RFL would be doing so.

Look at the CC final despite cheap tickets the stadium is 20k light of being full. Are you suggesting putting prices up and marketing it as an elite occasion would fill the stadium?

To improve the product you need to increase participation at junior level - that is the RFLs job. We need to be able to get some of the better Aussies to do that we need to increase revenue into the game - that is to large extent the job of the RL. Same goes for losing star players to the NRL and RU.

Ah, that I agree with.

But people aren't going to buy a product just because you are honest about it being . In fact 2 hat you are describing is the antithesis of marketing. It is antimarketing. If Cas v Salford isn't and isn't ever going to be a big game then it shouldn't be an SL game. Having a game that isn't elite in an elite league damages the competition.



Leeds Rhinos cannot and do not operate in a vacuum. They cannot charge premium prices when everyone else around them is selling it as a bargain basement deal.

you say pricing needs to be affordable and We need to be the elite sport for the North of England. Yet you also state that despite cheap tickets we can't sell out Wembley. We cannot sell out an elite sport at a cheap price because people know that a elite does not come cheap.


A guy meets you in the street, offers to sell you a rolex for a fiver. It's not got its proper box and has some cheap looking packaging do you buy it and get it insured and make sure you take care of it and treat it as a treasured possession? No because you know rolex watches don't cost 5 pounds and they aren't presented in cheap packaging. Best case scenario you buy it and treat it as disposable and unimportant, worst case you don't buy it because you aren't desperate for a watch and even 5 pound is a waste if it turns out to be as crap as you expect a 5 pound knock off to be.

I'm not stating that we can simply market the product ad premium and raise prices. I'm saying we sell a premium product at a premium price.

Our product isn't simply 26 men on the field. It's everything surrounding it. We don't just need improved junior development, we need bigger better stadiums with better more modern facilities, we need a better match day experience, We need better marketing, we need a better image, we need higher visibility.

None of those things can or will be achieved by lowering prices.

the product we are selling is soooooo much bigger than the 26 men we have on the field.

I can watch a better RL game, played by better players and better athletes for a few pounds a month in the NRL premier sport. I can watch it on a big fancy LCD TV. I can even watch exactly the same Super League product on Sky for a price per month less than 1 ticket. I can sit on my sofa and watch the game in glorious HD and pay for some nicer beers and a takeaway for less than going to the match.

If the product is simply 80 mins of RL I can do it more comfortably and cheaper on my sofa at home. So why would anyone go?

The answer is because we aren't selling 80 mins of rugby.

So I think Pop tart is massively wrong. The product hadn't been looked after. The game itself is great but sadly it is played in awful facilities, the surrounding entertainment is generally working mens club level, and to top it off the quality isn't always great.

We have the greatest sport in the world, but we present it terribly and we surround it with things which are cheap and unimaginative. And people in large have responded by valuing us low. So we get cheaper, invest less and wonder why people still aren't turning up

Only read the last page
I'm with smokeyta on a lot of points.

People don't realise it but making something cheaper does automatically make it less appealing in some ways. It's just the way the mind works. Although we are mainly dealing with northerners who want everything for free and then it's still too expensive.

Also we have reduced the amount of teams so I completely agree the attitude should now be. If the bottom two sides cannot be as good a game as the top two. Why not. Should they be in super league?

There's a lot of arguments for and against everything. Salary cap etc..
But no one can argue we want superleague full of great teams that can all compete for the big prizes.
That will never happen overnight. But look at cas. What an amazing season and hopefully they will keep that quality up for years to come.
If it's not going to be saints to win anything. I would love to see cas win a trophy.

I like the magic weekend idea. Letting other parts of the country watch the sport.
I think everything should be done to fill whatever stadium is used.
Travelling fans will fill a certain percent. Then free tickets for every student in the local area.
But not spouting about it on sky, that free tickets have been given out to fill the stadium.

The pre match entertainment seems to have died on it's in recent years too.
This all ads to the hype. Bradford had a real good hype years ago with what they were doing. Why did that fade?

You might believe the product is worth more the problem is your target audience doesn't. The target audience has a limited amount to spend on leisure and RL has to fit into that budget. I bet for many RL fans the cost of their hobby is a big chunk of their disposable income. If you want to charge more then you need to shift the demographic and as we have seen in London and Wales easier said than done.

Your Rolex image is a good one - Rolex is a tried and tested brand it competes with all its rivals on performance. SL cannot compete with NRL or RU let alone PL soccer. If you were seeing the likes of Greg Inglis/Sam Burgess every week as you are RU and soccer then yes I would agree there is justification for charging like Rolex do. Sadly you are offering a second rate product so how can you charge premium prices? The standard on the field outside of the top 4 clubs is poor so how can you market a game between two average sides as a big game and carry any credibility? If I go to a Mariah Carey concert and the venue is great the lights are great but she can't sing I am not going to be happy - I am there to hear her sing.

50-60,000 people watch the games live - 200-300,000 watch one game on Sky!!

You are selling primarily the quality on the pitch - if its an elite sport it needs elite players playing to elite standards - if you can't offer that then you cannot charge premium prices.